How to seed database in yii2?

Question

I am new to Yii framework. I want to seed my database like it can be done in Laravel framework using Faker. I tried this http://www.yiiframework.com/forum/index.php/topic/59655-how-to-seed-yii2-database/ but it does not provide much details. I would really appreciate if someone can help me out with the steps in details.

Answer 1

See at fixtures and faker realization in yii2-app-advanced tests. In project you also can write in console php yii fixture/load to load seeds in database and php yii fixture/generate-all to generate seed by faker.

yii.php should have right fixture controller in controllerMap array:

[
    'controllerMap' => [
        'fixture' => [
            'class' => 'yii\console\controllers\FixtureController',
            'namespace' => 'common\ActiveRecords'
        ]
    ]
]

See more info in documentation.

Answer 2

Creating console command and using Faker inside the console command controller to seed the database worked for me.
Following is the SeedController.php file which I created under commands folder:

// commands/SeedController.php
namespace app\commands;

use yii\console\Controller;
use app\models\Users;
use app\models\Profile;

class SeedController extends Controller
{
    public function actionIndex()
    {
        $faker = \Faker\Factory::create();

        $user = new Users();
        $profile = new Profile();
        for ( $i = 1; $i <= 20; $i++ )
        {
            $user->setIsNewRecord(true);
            $user->user_id = null;

            $user->username = $faker->username;
            $user->password = '123456';
            if ( $user->save() )
            {
                $profile->setIsNewRecord(true);
                $profile->user_id = null;

                $profile->user_id = $user->user_id;
                $profile->email = $faker->email;
                $profile->first_name = $faker->firstName;
                $profile->last_name = $faker->lastName;
                $profile->save();
            }
        }

    }
}

And used yii seed command to run the controller.