Missing documentation for requirement of --force for seeding the database during tenant creation

[laundy]

I guess a a lot of people use the SeedDatabase job to create settings and other inital data for each tenant (as proposed in TenancyServiceProvider), but the proposed use case does not work in production.

In contrast to the comment inside tenancy.php and the v3 documentation, there is no hint that you need to set the --force flag to true to be able to seed tenants during the tenant creation process (cf. tenancy.php).

Also, the corresponding database_can_be_seeded_after_tenant_creation test in DatabasePreparationTest does not consider the difference based on the configured environment, hence it will succeed in everything except production.

This is misleading and I would propose to change the documentation of Configuration#SeederParameters and Console Commands#RollbackAndSeed as follows:

Configuration

### Seeder parameters {#seeder-parameters}

`tenancy.seeder_parameters`

The same as migration parameters, but for `tenants:seed` and the `SeedDatabase` job.

> Note: Set `--force`to `true` to allow seeding tenant databases in production (e. g. during tenant creation).

Console Commands

## **Rollback & seed** (tenant-aware) {#rollback-and-seed}

- Rollback: `tenants:rollback`
- Seed: `tenants:seed`

> Note: You can configure the default parameters for `tenants:seed` (e.g. use a custom tenant seeder) in [the tenancy config]({{ $page->link('configuration#seeder-parameters') }}). Be aware that the `--force` parameter needs to be set in order to seed tenants in `production`.

Also, I would add a comment in tenancy.php:

    /**
     * Parameters used by the tenants:seed command.
     */
    'seeder_parameters' => [
        '--class' => 'DatabaseSeeder', // root seeder class
        // '--force' => true, // This needs to be true to seed tenant databases in production
    ],

I've also created a PR for this: archtechx/tenancy#1326

Thanks for your review!

[stancl]

I'm fine with adding something to the docs here, you can open a PR. This isn't as strongly documented as the migrate flags because seeders are generally discouraged in production, therefore rarely used, and people who do use them tend to be familiar with the --force requirement.

[laundy]

Thanks for your feedback. I get your point, but if seeding is discouraged in production, why is SeedDatabase proposed as a job in response to the TenantCreated in tenancy event? And what would be the recommended alternative?

I've created the docs PR (#293).

[stancl]

It's really app-specific. Seeders are discouraged in production by Laravel. We do use seeders in the SaaS boilerplate for example to create some sample data in tenant DBs. This is fine as long as it's done with care. Other apps may prefer seeding data in migrations.