Using Faker for Seeding Data

Hey Mike,

We still recommend Faker, but it's supported under fakerphp/faker package name now :) Actually, we do recommend zenstruck/foundry instead, than in turn has that faker as a dependency, so with Foundry you get double-win with creating your fixtures ;) We also have many videos about Foundry on SymfonyCasts, you can check them here: https://symfonycasts.com/search?q=foundry&sort=most relevant&types[]=video

Cheers!

Hey Diarill

What if you loop over the array of names instead? you'll get the same order everytime but I don't think that's a real problem

Cheers!

Hey Christina V.

The only problem with choosing a OneToOne relationship randomly is that it may assign the same object twice, you would have to remove it from the array after being selected.

Cheers!

think got it, using the refference that we added earlier in baseFixture.

$novel->setAuthor($this->getReference(Author::class.'_0'));

now gota figure out how to "randomize" that _0 so it loops through the list of authors, and assigns each novel to a random existing author.

Hey JLChafardet,

Well done! Glad you solved this yourself! Yeah, error message was pretty clear I suppose, you just need to convert that int number into a real entity, it sounds like you just miss something in your code.

Cheers!

Hey Edward B.!

You've got a great memory... or you've just been around Symfony for as LONG as I have ;). I first learned Symfony (version 1) because I was searching for a framework in PHP and Symfony had GREAT documentation. That was Francois' work - so I still owe him a lot for giving me such a great start :). Were you also a symfony 1 user?

Cheers!

For me it was Symfony 2 in 2013. My first non-proprietary PHP framework. Symfony's structure was completely non-intuitive to me, as was Doctrine's idea of writing the queries for me. So I grabbed the only book available, Fabien's. It's still on the shelf here! I'm just returning to Symfony from years of CakePHP, thus working through your (plural, the whole team's) tutorial sequences. Starting with an empty repo, trying to embrace the Symfony 5 way of doing things, is a challenge - and I'm trying to help out by leaving Symfony 5 notes as I go.

I just discovered "Object Design Style Guide" by Matthias Noback. It turns out to be a philosophy of how to write code in the Symfony 5 ecosystem. It carefully keeps that fact a secret which makes it fun! For example it explains when you should inject dependencies into the constructor of a service object, and when to inject the dependency into the method. A service, once constructed, should be immutable. So inject the logger into the constructor, but inject the User or Request object into the method, as they are specific to that method call, and the next call could be for a different user or request. (Noback's book is a Manning publication.)

Hey Edward B.!

> Symfony's structure was completely non-intuitive to me, as was Doctrine's idea of writing the queries for me

Yea, Symfony 2's structure was big and weird - I'm happy that it's much smaller now. And for someone with a lot of database experience, I *consistently* see that problem with Doctrine: it's super hard to think about classes & objects instead of tables and columns, especially with Doctrine relations :).

> Starting with an empty repo, trying to embrace the Symfony 5 way of doing things, is a challenge - and I'm trying to help out by leaving Symfony 5 notes as I go.

We appreciate that!

> I just discovered "Object Design Style Guide" by Matthias Noback. It turns out to be a philosophy of how to write code in the Symfony 5 ecosystem

Matthias is a SUPER smart and also pragmatic guy. I definitely recommend his stuff - good find!

Cheers!

Hey Damir,

I think I know the problem! Looks like "order" is a reserved word in PostgreSql, so the query looks invalid for it. Try to rename your "order" table to something different, e.g. to "orders". I suppose the same might be needed for "user" table, because "user" might be a reserved word as well.

Cheers!

Hey Victor,
Thank u for replay.
Maybe you are right.
But, when I migrated entities, there were no problems with "order" table name.
I know, that in PostgreSQl 11 "order" word are reserved.
I already have added "shopping carts" by migration. I hope, when I will add "orders", it's won't be impossible.
Cheers!

Hey Damir,

I suppose it depends on queries, if you escape table and column names with back ticks - it should work even if you use reserved words. But better do not use reserved words at all, just simplify a lot of things :)

Cheers!

Hey Victor!
You are right. The problem was solved after changing "Order" to "TOrder".
Thanks a lot!

Hey Damir,

Glad it helped!

Cheers!

Hey Cesar,

For unique things I think you can try unique() modifier from Faker, see their docs for more info: https://github.com/fzaninotto/Faker#modifiers . As a workaround, you can manually add some unique indexes for generated strings to be extra sure it's unique, for example like:

for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
    $article = new Article();
    // ...
    $article->setSlug($this->faker->slug . '-' . $i)
}

I hope this helps!

Cheers!

Thanks, but I solve this problem.

Hey Damir,

Glad you were able to fix it. I bet the problem was in missing implemented interface, so the system does not know that you have a few fixture files.

Cheers!

No. By mistake I deleted "extends BaseFixtures" in one of tow fixtures. Banal carelessness.
Thanks.

Hey Damir,

Ah, ok, sounds reasonable! :) Thank you for your feedback, might be useful for other users.

Cheers!

haha, if you win it, invite us some beers!

I've just realised they are static properties, thats why self was used. If they weren't static, could we use '$this->articleTitles'?

Is there any reason they're static?

Hey Cryptoblob,

Yes, exactly, that's because they are static. And sure, if you removed "static" keyword - you'd need to access them via "$this". I don't think there's a strong reason *why* exactly they are static. Mostly, you make properties or methods static if you want to call them without creating an object, i.e. call them in class context. But here, as I see, we call them in object context, so they might not be static. So I suppose it's just kinda personal convention, not sure :)

Cheers!

I'm not sure if I understood your question correctly, but what you want is to create a new Author when calling setAuthor on a User object? If that's the case, that's not how it is supposed to work. You have to create a new Author instance, fulfill its data and then pass it to the setter method (And of course, calling persist & flush)

Cheers!

I've got the same error but i fixed it myself. The order is wrong:
$this->manager = $manager;<br />$this->loadData($manager);<br />$this->faker = Factory::create();

loadData and Faker must be switched, otherwise it will use faker before it is created...
$this->manager = $manager;<br />$this->faker = Factory::create();<br />$this->loadData($manager);

Hey Dion,

Thank you for this tip! Yeah, you need to create Faker instance before calling loadData() where you're going to use it.

I hope this will help Лёлик!

Cheers!

Hey Mrlelik!

Hmm. So, it sounds like $this->fake is null for some reason. Make sure that your fixture class is extending the BaseFixture AND that your method is called loadData() instead of load() (otherwise, you will override the code that sets this property).

Let me know if this helps!

Cheers!