README

Yii2 Db seeder is a Yii2 adapter for Php db seeder, which is a tool to quickly populate database with fake data.

Installation

The preferred way to install this extension is through composer.

Either run

$ composer require tebazil/yii2-db-seeder

or add

"tebazil/yii2-db-seeder": "*"

to the require section of your composer.json file.

Quick start

You can quickly seed your database with generated data with something like this:

$seeder = new \tebazil\yii2seeder\Seeder();
$generator = $seeder->getGeneratorConfigurator();
$faker = $generator->getFakerConfigurator();

$seeder->table('article')->columns([
    'id', //automatic pk
    'book_id', //automatic fk
    'name'=>$faker->firstName,
    'content'=>$faker->text
        ])->rowQuantity(30);


$seeder->table('book')->columns([
    'id',
    'name'=>$faker->text(20),
])->rowQuantity(30);

$seeder->table('category')->columns([
    'id',
    'book_id',
    'name'=>$faker->text(20),
    'type'=>$faker->randomElement(['shop','cv','test']),
])->rowQuantity(30);

$seeder->refill();

Please review the Php db seeder for extended documentation on usage.

Differences from original library

• With Yii2 Db Seeder you do not need to provide database configuration by default, it uses Yii::$app->db to retrieve connection information. You can optionally provide seeder with a database connection component name. You do that like:

$seeder = new \tebazil\yii2seeder\Seeder('db2');

There. Seeder would be using Yii::$app->db2 now.

• You can use standart yii wildcards for prefixed table names, like {{%table_name}}.

• yii\db\Migration is used as a database abstraction layer instead of a native database helper. This basically means that you can work with all the databases Yii2 supports.

Best usage practices

• Create your project's database, generate some models and crud with gii.
• Make a console application controller for action refilling database with test data.
• Run it when it is needed

=> You have project with test data in your database, easier to develop and easier to show to clients what's being happening

• If you use migrations, don't be confused with the fact that migrations keep the project history, and db-seeder is not bound to them - migrations and seeding are two different instruments. Migrations is a long-term instrument to manipulate database structure with time keeping history, and database seeder is a simple library to keep test data up-to-date. So, when a new migration appears, just fix the console command filling the database to be up-to-date.
• On early project develoment stages, the tool is useful when being run every time a commit happens, happening immediately after migrations are applied
• On later project development stages constant test data refilling might ruin the testing, so the advice would be to refill manually and only the tables you need (usually the newly created ones - to test out new things)