How to Integrate Faker as a Third Party into Codeigniter

Ahsan Zameer

6 years ago

Faker is one of the most popular PHP library for generating fake data. I quite often use this library at the start of my project. Laravel has built-in faker library but for codeigniter I have to add faker as a third party library.

So in this post I am going to show you how to integrate faker into codeigniter.

Integrate Faker into Codeigniter:

Following are the steps involves in integration process:

Download codeigniter 3.x from https://codeigniter.com/download
Download or clone faker library from https://github.com/fzaninotto/Faker
Copy faker src folder fo the codeigniter->application->thirdparty and rename src folder as faker.
Add include path in the controller in this example I will use Welcome.php controller.
Use Faker\Factory::create() to create and initialize faker

Codeigniter Folder Structure:

After downloading default codeigniter structure is something like this.

Faker Folder Structure:

After downloading from github faker folder structure look like below.

Copy Faker Src folder to application/third_party:

Now copy faker src folder to codeigniter/application/third_party folder and rename src folder to faker.

Add Include path to the Controller (controllers/welcome.php):

Copy below Path to index function of welcome.php


include APPPATH.'/third_party/faker/autoload.php';

include APPPATH.'/third_party/faker/autoload.php';

Now initialize and use faker by assigning it to the variable.


$faker = Faker\Factory::create();
$faker->seed(5);

echo "<strong>Title: </strong>".$faker->title;
echo "<br>";
echo "<strong>First Name: </strong>".$faker->firstName;
echo "<br>";
		
echo "<strong>Last Name: </strong>".$faker->lastName;
echo "<br>";

$faker = Faker\Factory::create();

$faker->seed(5);

echo "Title: ".$faker->title;

echo " ";

echo "First Name: ".$faker->firstName;

echo " ";

echo "Last Name: ".$faker->lastName;

echo " ";

Your final index function will look something like this


public function index()
	{
		include APPPATH.'/third_party/faker/autoload.php';
		
		$faker = Faker\Factory::create();
		$faker->seed(5);

		echo "<strong>Title: </strong>".$faker->title;
		echo "<br>";
		
		echo "<strong>First Name: </strong>".$faker->firstName;
		echo "<br>";
		
		echo "<strong>Last Name: </strong>".$faker->lastName;
		echo "<br>";
		
		echo "<strong>Street Address: </strong>".$faker->streetAddress;
		echo "<br>";
		
		echo "<strong>Postcode: </strong>".$faker->postcode;
		echo "<br>";
		
		echo "<strong>City: </strong>".$faker->city;
		echo "<br>";
		
		echo "<strong>Country: </strong>".$faker->country;
		echo "<br>";
		
		
		//$this->load->view('welcome_message');
	}

public function index()

{

include APPPATH.'/third_party/faker/autoload.php';

$faker = Faker\Factory::create();

$faker->seed(5);

echo "Title: ".$faker->title;

echo " ";

echo "First Name: ".$faker->firstName;

echo " ";

echo "Last Name: ".$faker->lastName;

echo " ";

echo "Street Address: ".$faker->streetAddress;

echo " ";

echo "Postcode: ".$faker->postcode;

echo " ";

echo "City: ".$faker->city;

echo " ";

echo "Country: ".$faker->country;

echo " ";

//$this->load->view('welcome_message');

}