Fixtures Bundle

Overview

The Fixtures Bundle helps developers to create fixtures or fake data that can be used for development and/or testing purposes.

It relies on the following 3rd party libraries:

DoctrineFixturesBundle (gives possibility to load data fixtures programmatically into the Doctrine ORM or ODM)

fzaninotto/Faker (generates fake data for you)

nelmio/alice (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)

It also provides the possibility to set up a ready-to-use demo theme, for development.

How to use fixtures

The following chapter describes how to make use of the Fixtures Bundle features.

Creating a simple PHP fixture class

Fixtures should be created inside SWP\FixturesBundle\DataFixtures\<db_driver> directory and by convention, should be called like: LoadPagesData, LoadArticlesData, LoadUsersData etc.

Replace db_driver either with ORM for the Doctrine ORM or PHPCR for the Doctrine PHPCR ODM.

Example Fixture class:

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<?php
namespace SWP\FixturesBundle\DataFixtures\ORM;

use Doctrine\Common\DataFixtures\FixtureInterface;
use Doctrine\Common\Persistence\ObjectManager;
use SWP\Bundle\FixturesBundle\AbstractFixture;

class LoadPagesData extends AbstractFixture implements FixtureInterface
{
    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    public function load(ObjectManager $manager)
    {
        $env = $this->getEnvironment();
        $this->loadFixtures(
            '@SWPFixturesBundle/Resources/fixtures/ORM/'.$env.'/page.yml',
            $manager
        );
    }
}

Each fixture class extends AbstractFixture class and implements FixtureInterface. This way we can use the load method, inside which we can create some objects using PHP and/or make use of nelmio/alice and fzaninotto/Faker by loading fixtures in YAML format, as shown in the example above.

Creating a simple Alice fixture (YAML format)

For more details on how to create Alice fixtures, please see the Alice documentation as a reference.

Example Alice fixture:

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SWP\CoreBundle\Entity\Page:
    page1:
        name: "About Us"
        type: 1
        slug: "about-us"
        templateName: "static.html.twig"
        contentPath: "/swp/content/about-us"
    page2:
        name: "Features"
        type: 1
        slug: "features"
        templateName: "features.html.twig"
        contentPath: "/swp/content/features"
    page3:
        name: "Get Involved" # we can also use faker library formatters like: <paragraph(20)> etc
        type: 1
        slug: "get-involved"
        templateName: "involved.html.twig"
        contentPath: "/swp/content/get-involved"

The above configuration states that we want to persist into the database three objects of type SWP\CoreBundle\Entity\Page. We can use the faker formatters where, for example, <paragraph(20)> is one of the fzaninotto/Faker formatters, which tells Alice to generate 20 paragraphs filled with fake data.

By convention, Alice YAML files should be placed inside Resources/fixtures/<db_driver>/<environment>, where <environment> is the current environment name (dev, test).

For instance, having the Resources/fixtures/ORM/test/page.yml Alice fixture, we will be able to persist fake data defined in the YAML file into the database (using Doctrine ORM driver), only when the test environment is set or defined differently in SWP\FixturesBundle\DataFixtures\ORM\LoadPagesData.php.

There is a lot of flexibility on how to define fixtures, so it’s up to the developer how to create them.

Loading all fixtures

Note: Remember to update your database schema before loading fixtures! To do this, run in a console:

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php bin/console doctrine:schema:update --force

Once you have your fixtures defined, we can simply load them. To do that you must execute console commands.

To load Doctrine ORM fixtures:

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php bin/console doctrine:fixtures:load --append

See php bin/console doctrine:fixtures:load --help for more details.

After executing the commands above, your database will be filled with the fake data, which can be used by themes.

Setting up a demo theme

To make it easier to start with the Web Publisher, we created a simple demo theme. To set this theme as an active one, you need to execute the following command in a console:

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php bin/console swp:theme:install 123abc src/SWP/Bundle/FixturesBundle/Resources/themes/DefaultTheme/ -f -p

This command will install default theme for the default tenant which was already created by loading fixtures (see above).

See php bin/console swp:theme:install --help for more details.