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Complete Reference

  1. Creating Fixtures
    1. YAML
    2. PHP
  2. Fixture Ranges
  3. Calling Methods
    1. Method arguments with flags
    2. Method arguments with parameters
    3. Optional method calls
  4. Specifying Constructor Arguments
  5. Using a factory
  6. Optional Data
  7. Handling Unique Constraints

Creating Fixtures

YAML

The most basic functionality of this library is to turn flat yaml files into objects. You can define many objects of different classes in one file as such:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user0:
        username: bob
        fullname: Bob
        birthDate: 1980-10-10
        email: [email protected]
        favoriteNumber: 42

    user1:
        username: alice
        fullname: Alice
        birthDate: 1978-07-12
        email: [email protected]
        favoriteNumber: 27

Nelmio\Entity\Group:
    group1:
        name: Admins

This works fine, but it is not very powerful and is completely static. You still have to do most of the work. Let's see how to make this more interesting.

PHP

You can also specify fixtures in PHP by returing an array where each key with the following structure:

<?php

return [
    'Nelmio\Alice\support\models\User' => [
        'user1' => [
            'username' => 'bob',
            'fullname' => 'Bob',
        ],
        'user2' => [
            'username' => 'alice',
            'fullname' => 'Alice',
        ],
    ],
];

Fixture Ranges

The first step is to let Alice create many copies of an object for you to remove duplication from the yaml file.

You can do that by defining a range in the fixture name:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user{1..10}:
        username: bob
        fullname: Bob
        birthDate: 1980-10-10
        email: [email protected]
        favoriteNumber: 42

Now it will generate ten users, with IDs user1 to user10. Pretty good but we only have 10 bobs with the same name, username and email, which is not so fancy yet.

You can also specify a list of values instead of a range:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user_{alice, bob}:
        username: '<current()>'
        fullname: '<current()>'
        birthDate: 1980-10-10
        email: '<current()>@example.org'
        favoriteNumber: 42

The <current()> function is a bit special as it can only be called in the context of a collection (list of values or a range).

In the case of a list of values like the example above, it will return for the first fixture user_alice the value alice, and bob for the fixture user_bob.

In the case of a range (e.g. user{1..10}), <current()> will return 1 for user1, 2 for user2 etc.

Using this function outside of this case will cause an exception.

To go further we the example above, we can just randomize data.

Calling Methods

Sometimes though you need to call a method to initialize some more data, you can do this just like with properties but instead using the method name and giving it an array of arguments. For example let's assume the user class has a setLocation method that requires a latitude and a longitude:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user1:
        username: '<username()>'
        __calls:
            - setLocation: [40.689269, -74.044737]

Method arguments with flags

You can specify a flag on a specific argument like so:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user{1..10}:
        username: '<username()>'
        __calls:
            - setLocation:
                0 (unique): '<latitude()>'
                1 (unique): '<longitude()>'

Method arguments with parameters

parameters:
    foo: bar

Nelmio\Entity\Dummy:
    dummy{1..10}:
        __calls:
            - setLocation:
                arg0: '<{foo}>'
                arg1: '$arg0' # will be resolved info 'bar'
                3: 500  # the numerical key here is just a random number as in YAML you cannot mix keys with array values
                4: '$3' # `3` here refers to the *third* argument, i.e. 500

Note: as you can see, arguments can be used as parameters as you go. They however will only in the scope of that function, i.e. in the above the parameter $arg0 is usable only within the __construct declaration above.

The case above can be a bit confusing in YAML, in PHP it would be the following:

[
    'parameters' => 'bar',
    Nelmio\Entity\Dummy::class => [
        'dummy{1..10}' => [
            '__calls' => [
                [
                    'arg0' => '<{foo}>',
                    'arg1' => '$arg0',
                    500,
                    '$3',
                ],
            ],
        ],
    ],
],

Optional method calls

Calls can be made optional thanks to an optional flag. In the following example, setLocation() will have 80% chances to be called.

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user1:
        username: '<username()>'
        __calls:
            - setLocation (80%?): [40.689269, -74.044737]

Specifying Constructor Arguments

When a constructor has mandatory arguments you must define it as explained above, for example if the User required a username in the constructor you could do the following:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user1:
        __construct: ['<username()>']

If you specify false in place of constructor arguments, Alice will instantiate the object without executing the constructor:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user1:
        __construct: false

Using a factory

Note: the following also applies to __construct. However using __construct for factories has been deprecated as of 3.0.0 and will be removed in 4.0.0. Use __factory instead.

If you want to call a static factory method instead of a constructor, you can specify a hash as the constructor:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user1:
        __factory: { create: ['<username()>'] }

If the static factory belongs to another class, you can call it as follows:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user1:
        __factory: { Nelmio\User\UserFactory::create: ['<username()>'] }

Optional Data

Some fields do not have to be filled-in, like the favoriteNumber in this example might be personal data you don't want to share, to reflect this in our fixtures and be sure the site works and looks alright even when users don't enter a favorite number, we can make Alice fill it in sometimes using the 50%? value : empty value notation. It's a bit like the ternary operator, and you can omit the empty value if null is ok as such: 50%? value.

Let's update the user definition with this new information:

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

Now only half of the users will have a number filled-in.

Handling Unique Constraints

Quite often some database fields have a unique constraint set on them, in which case having the fixtures randomly failing to generate because of bad luck is quite annoying. This is especially important if you generate large amounts of objects, as otherwise you will most likely never encounter this issue.

By declaring the key as unique using the (unique) flag at the end, Alice will make sure every element of this class that is created has a unique value for that property. For example:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user{1..10}:
        username (unique): '<username()>'

In a case of a method call or a constructor, you can specify the unique flag like so:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    user{1..10}:
        __construct:
            0 (unique): '<username()>'

If the property or field in question is an array, the behaviour changes to apply only to the fixture, i.e. the following will work:

Nelmio\Entity\User:
    friends{1..2}:
        username (unique): '<username()>'
    user{1..2}:
        friends (unique): '@friends*' # array value

However the fields user1#friends and user2#friends will not have any duplicate.


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