This Laravel 5 library creates actual, 100% real addresses, with full address details and lat/long coordinates Using the Google Maps API, these addresses can be created using the RealAddress classes, and also supports Faker, so you can use RealAddress in your database seeding!

Require this package with composer using the following command:

composer require yomo/addressfactory

Execute:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=yomo.realaddress

If you are running Laravel 5.4 and below, you need to add the service provider to the providers array in config/app.php

Yomo\AddressFactory\AddressFactoryServiceProvider::class

Then execute:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=yomo.realaddress

As this library relies on Google Maps, your Google Maps API key needs to be defined in your .env file:

GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY=abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv

If you don't have an API key (they're free), get one here

RealAddress offers three different ways of generating real-world addresses. Each of these methods return the \Geocoder\Provider\GoogleMaps\Model\GoogleAddress class, which takes the Google Maps API response and standardises it in an easy-to-use, easy-to-read manner. As standard, RealAddress supports the generating of real addresses for the following countries:

• United States of America
• Great Britain
• France
• Germany
• South Africa
• Russia

You can extend RealAddress by adding additional countries in the config/realaddress.php config file. This config file also defines which cities in a given country addresses can be created for. Additional cities can be defined here.

RealAddress provides additional functions for Faker's \Faker\Generator class instance. The code example below shows typical usage in a Factory class:

use Faker\Generator as Faker;

$factory->define( \App\Models\Business::class, function ( Faker $faker ) {

	/** @var \Geocoder\Provider\GoogleMaps\Model\GoogleAddress $address */
	$address = $faker->britishAddress();

	return [

		'title'              => $faker->words(2),
		'full_address'       => $address->getFormattedAddress(),
		'latitude'           => $address->getCoordinates()->getLatitude(),
		'longitude'          => $address->getCoordinates()->getLongitude()

	];

} );

Similarly, the address can be limited to a specific city: $address = $faker->britishAddress('London');

or can be generated randomly between multiple-defined cities: $address = $faker->britishAddress(['London', 'Manchester']);

... where these cities must be defined in config/realaddress.php in order to work.

The ready-to-use faker functions include:

• britishAddress()
• usaAddress()
• germanAddress()
• frenchAddress()
• southAfricanAddress()
• russianAddress()

If you have extended config/realaddress.php to include a new country, you can generate an address for it with:

	$address = $faker->realAddress('Brazil')						# From any of the defined cities
	$address = $faker->realAddress('Brazil', 'Rio de Janiero');		# For Rio de Janiero only
	$address = $faker->realAddresss('Brazil', ['Rio de Janiero', 'Salvador'])	# Multiple cities

Using the Facade allows you to generate real-world addresses at runtime, and also allows multiple addresses to be generated at once. The code examples below show typical RealAddress facade usage:

use Yomo\AddressFactory\Facades\RealAddress;
.
.
.
$johannesburgAddresses 	= RealAddress::makeSouthAfrica(20, 'Johannesburg');		# 20 addresses for Johannesburg, South Africa
$frenchAddress 			= RealAddress::makeFrance(1);							# A single address for France
$brazilAddresses		= RealAddress::make(10, 'Brazil');						# 10 addresses for the custom country of Brazil

Functionally, provides the same methods as the Facade above:

$f = new \Yomo\AddressFactory\RealAddress();

$southAfricanPoints = $f->makeSouthAfrica(4);                # Generates 4 locations within South Africa's major cities
$capeTownPoints     = $f->makeSouthAfrica(2, 'Cape Town');   # Generates 2 locations from Cape Town, South Africa
$multiPoints        = $f->makeSouthAfrica(3, ['Pretoria', 'Johannesburg']);

An example of extending the config/realaddress.php array to include Kenya, and two cities:

'kenya' => [
		'cities' => [ 'Nairobi', 'Mombasa' ],
	],

Note that the cities defined here must be identifiable to Google Maps, and should ideally be spelt in their English variant.

Stuart Steedman is the head of development at Yonder Media, a South African digital media agency operating out of Pretoria. He specialises in PHP and Laravel development, and is a speaker at tech and development related conferences.