{"id":3136,"date":"2025-07-07T06:18:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T06:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/?p=3136"},"modified":"2025-07-07T06:18:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T06:18:04","slug":"laravel-error-target-class-databaseseeder-does-not-exist-solved-for-laravel-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/laravel-error-target-class-databaseseeder-does-not-exist-solved-for-laravel-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Laravel Error: Target class [DatabaseSeeder] does not exist \u2013 Solved for Laravel 10+"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you&#8217;re working with Laravel 10+ and run into the frustrating error:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>Target class &#91;DatabaseSeeder] does not exist.\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;you&#8217;re not alone. This is a <strong>common issue<\/strong> developers face, especially when upgrading from older Laravel versions (like Laravel 7 or 8), or when working in a freshly cloned project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this blog, I\u2019ll explain <strong>why this happens<\/strong>, what I encountered, and how I fixed it step by step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Error Message<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>When I ran:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>php artisan db:seed\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Laravel returned this error:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>Target class &#91;DatabaseSeeder] does not exist.\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Even though I had the <code>DatabaseSeeder.php<\/code> file, Laravel still couldn\u2019t find it. Here&#8217;s the root cause and fix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Root Cause<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In Laravel 8+, the location for seeders was changed from:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\/database\/seeds\/\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\/database\/seeders\/\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>If your project still uses the old path <code>\/database\/seeds\/<\/code>, Laravel may not detect your seeders by default.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>My Solution (Laravel 10+)<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step 1: Move Your Seeder File<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>I <strong>renamed<\/strong> my folder from:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\/database\/seeds\/\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\/database\/seeders\/\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>And moved my file:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\/database\/seeds\/DatabaseSeeder.php\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\/database\/seeders\/DatabaseSeeder.php\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Make sure the namespace inside the file is updated accordingly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>namespace Database\\Seeders;\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step 2: Fix Composer Autoload (if previously modified)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Earlier, my <code>composer.json<\/code> file had this line under <code>autoload &gt; classmap<\/code>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\"classmap\": &#91;\n    \"database\/seeds\"\n]\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Since I moved the files to <code>database\/seeders\/<\/code>, I updated it to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\"classmap\": &#91;\n    \"database\/seeders\"\n]\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step 3: Run Composer Autoload<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>After fixing the path, I regenerated autoload files:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>composer dump-autoload\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>This time, there were no errors. Laravel successfully detected the seeders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"> Step 4: Seed the Database<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, I re-ran:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>php artisan db:seed\n<\/code><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re working with Laravel 10+ and run into the frustrating error: &#8230;you&#8217;re not alone. This is a common issue developers face, especially when upgrading from older&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3136"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3138,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions\/3138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopssupport.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}