README

Faker

Faker is a PHP library that generates fake data for you. Whether you need to bootstrap your database, create good-looking XML documents, fill-in your persistence to stress test it, or anonymize data taken from a production service, Faker is for you.

It's heavily inspired by Perl's Data::Faker, and by Ruby's Faker.

Getting Started

Installation

Faker requires PHP >= 7.1.

composer require fakerphp/faker

Documentation

Full documentation can be found over on fakerphp.github.io.

Basic Usage

Use Faker\Factory::create() to create and initialize a Faker generator, which can generate data by accessing methods named after the type of data you want.

<?php
require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

// use the factory to create a Faker\Generator instance
$faker = Faker\Factory::create();
// generate data by calling methods
echo $faker->name();
// 'Vince Sporer'
echo $faker->email();
// 'walter.sophia@hotmail.com'
echo $faker->text();
// 'Numquam ut mollitia at consequuntur inventore dolorem.'

Each call to $faker->name() yields a different (random) result. This is because Faker uses __call() magic, and forwards Faker\Generator->$method() calls to Faker\Generator->format($method, $attributes).

<?php
for ($i = 0; $i < 3; $i++) {
    echo $faker->name() . "\n";
}

// 'Cyrus Boyle'
// 'Alena Cummerata'
// 'Orlo Bergstrom'

License

Faker is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

Backward compatibility promise

Faker is using Semver. This means that versions are tagged with MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. Only a new major version will be allowed to break backward compatibility (BC).

Classes marked as @experimental or @internal are not included in our backward compatibility promise. You are also not guaranteed that the value returned from a method is always the same. You are guaranteed that the data type will not change.

PHP 8 introduced named arguments, which increased the cost and reduces flexibility for package maintainers. The names of the arguments for methods in Faker is not included in our BC promise.