Laravel seeding results in Null timestamp

Question

So i had a seeder for Languages Table (LanguageTableSeeder) as follows:

DB::table('languages')->insert([
    'name'        => 'English',
    'flag'        => '',
    'abbr'        => 'en',
    'script'    => 'Latn',
    'native'    => 'English',
    'active'    => '1',
    'default'    => '1',
]);

    $this->command->info('Language seeding successful.');

But this resulted in created_at and updated_at fields to be Null in database. i looked up the pre shipped UsersTabeSeeder and changed my LanguageTableSeeder to mach the exact same format:

DB::table('languages')->delete();

$languages = [
    [
        'name' => 'English',
        'flag' => '',
        'abbr' => 'en',
        'script' => 'Latn',
        'native' => 'English',
        'active' => '1',
        'default' => '1',
    ],
];

foreach ($languages as $language){
    Language::create($language);
}

This also resulted in created_at and updated_at fields to be Null which is odd because when i look up at Users Table in my data base they have created_at and updated_at fields to be set at the exact time of running the seeder.

So here is my question. Why is this happening? and is it necessary to use:

'created_at' => date("Y-m-d H:i:s"),
'updated_at' => date("Y-m-d H:i:s"),

to get filled timestamp when seeding?

Answer 1

Auto timestamp saving is only for Eloquent feature so you need to do manually like below for non eloquent feature

DB::table('languages')->insert([
    'name'        => 'English',
    'flag'        => '',
    'abbr'        => 'en',
    'script'    => 'Latn',
    'native'    => 'English',
    'active'    => '1',
    'default'    => '1',
    'created_at' => Carbon::now()->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
    'updated_at' => Carbon::now()->format('Y-m-d H:i:s')

]);

OR do it eloquently(Like you have seen in auto generated seeds like UserTableSeeder)

    $language = new Language();
    $language ->name = 'English';
    $language->flag'  = '',
    $language ->abbr  = 'en',
    $language->script ='Latn',
    $language->native ='English',
    $language->active ='1',
    $language->default ='1',
    $language->save();

Why to use carbon? Eloquent serves up Carbon for datetime and timestamp columns. By default it will serve up Carbon for the created_at, updated_at, and deleted_at columns. You can customize this in your models extending Eloquent\Model.

Carbon\Carbon extends \DateTime, so there is no loss of functionality by using Carbon in favor of DateTime, only more benefit/flexibility.