Alice - Expressive fixtures generator

Relying on fzaninotto/Faker, Alice allows you to create a ton of fixtures/fake data for use while developing or testing your project. It gives you a few essential tools to make it very easy to generate complex data with constraints in a readable and easy to edit way, so that everyone on your team can tweak the fixtures if needed.

Warning: this doc is being updated for alice 3.0. If you want to check the documentation for 2.x, head this way.

Table of Contents

1. Installation
2. Example
3. Getting Started
4. Basic Usage
5. Framework integration 1. Symfony
6. Complete Reference
7. Creating Fixtures 1. YAML 1. PHP
8. Fixture Ranges
9. Calling Methods
10. Specifying Constructor Arguments
11. Using a factory
12. Optional Data
13. Handling Unique Constraints
14. Handling Relations
15. References
16. Multiple References
17. Self reference
18. Passing references to providers
19. Keep Your Fixtures Dry
20. Fixture Inheritance
21. Including files
22. Variables
23. Parameters
24. Customize Data Generation
25. Faker Data
26. Localized Fake Data TODO: port that change to v2
27. Default Providers 1. Identity 1. Current 1. Cast
28. Reuse generated data using objects value
29. Custom Faker Data Providers
30. Advanced Guide
31. Performance
32. Expression Language (DSL) 1. Parameters 1. Functions 1. Identity 1. Arrays 1. Optional 1. References 1. Property Reference
33. Extending Alice 1. Custom Flag 1. Custom Instantiation 1. Custom Accessor
34. Third-party libraries
35. Contribute
36. Differences between 2.x and 3.x
37. Architecture 1. FixtureBuilder 1. Generator
38. Expression Language
39. Contributing 1. Testing 1. Profiling
40. Upgrade
41. License

Other references:

• Tutorial: Using Alice in Symfony

Installation

This is installable via Composer as nelmio/alice:

composer require --dev nelmio/alice:^3.0@beta

Example

Here is a complete example of entity declaration:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user{1..10}:
        username: '<username()>'
        fullname: '<firstName()> <lastName()>'
        birthDate: '<date()>'
        email: '<email()>'
        favoriteNumber: '50%? <numberBetween(1, 200)>'

Nelmio\Entity\Group:
    group1:
        name: Admins
        owner: '@user1'
        members: '<numberBetween(1, 10)>x @user*'
        created: '<dateTimeBetween("-200 days", "now")>'
        updated: '<dateTimeBetween($created, "now")>'

You can then load them easily with:

$loader = new Nelmio\Alice\Loader\NativeLoader();
$objectSet = $loader->loadFile(__DIR__.'/fixtures.yml');

Or load an array right away:

$loader = new Nelmio\Alice\Loader\NativeLoader();
$objectSet = $loader->loadData([
    \Nelmio\Entity\User::class => [
        'user{1..10}' => [
            'username' => '<username()>',
            'fullname' => '<firstName()> <lastName()>',
            'birthDate' => '<date()>',
            'email' => '<email()>',
            'favoriteNumber' => '50%? <numberBetween(1, 200)>',
        ],
    ],
    \Nelmio\Entity\Group::class => [
        'group1' => [
            'name' => Admins,
            'owner' => '@user1',
            'members' => '<numberBetween(1, 10)>x @user*',
            'created' => '<dateTimeBetween("-200 days", "now")>',
            'updated' => '<dateTimeBetween($created, "now")>',
        ],
    ],
]);

For more information, refer to the documentation.

Third-party libraries

• Symfony:
  • hautelook/AliceBundle
  • h4cc/AliceFixturesBundle
  • knplabs/rad-fixtures-load
• Nette
  • Zenify/DoctrineFixtures
• Zend Framework 2:
  • ma-si/aist-alice-fixtures
• Framework Agnostic
  • trappar/AliceGenerator

Contribute

Check the contribution guide.

Upgrade

Check the upgrade guide.

License

Released under the MIT License.