Generated content

Generated content provides a plugin-based system for programmatically generating deterministic content entities. Unlike random dummy content, generated content produces reproducible sets useful for visual regression testing and consistent demo environments.

Plugin system

Content generators are PHP classes placed in a module's src/Plugin/GeneratedContent/ directory, annotated with the #[GeneratedContent] attribute.

Creating a plugin

namespace Drupal\ys_demo\Plugin\GeneratedContent;

use Drupal\generated_content\Attribute\GeneratedContent;
use Drupal\generated_content\Plugin\GeneratedContent\GeneratedContentPluginBase;
use Drupal\taxonomy\Entity\Term;

#[GeneratedContent(
  id: 'ys_demo_taxonomy_term_tags',
  entity_type: 'taxonomy_term',
  bundle: 'tags',
  weight: 10,
)]
class TaxonomyTermTags extends GeneratedContentPluginBase {

  public function generate(): array {
    $entities = [];

    foreach (['Technology', 'Science', 'Health'] as $name) {
      $term = Term::create(['vid' => 'tags', 'name' => $name]);
      $term->save();
      $entities[] = $term;
    }

    return $entities;
  }

}

Attribute parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
id	string	yes	Unique plugin ID
entity_type	string	yes	Target entity type (node, taxonomy_term, etc.)
bundle	string	yes	Target bundle
weight	int	no	Execution order (lower = earlier)
tracking	bool	no	Track created entities for cleanup (default: TRUE)
helper	string	no	Custom helper class extending GeneratedContentHelper

Cross-referencing entities

Use weight to control execution order and $this->helper to reference previously generated entities:

// In a node plugin with weight: 20 (runs after terms at weight: 10).
$tags = $this->helper::randomTerms('tags', 3);
$node->set('field_tags', $tags);

Triggering generation

Drush command

drush generated-content:create-content
drush generated-content:create-content node article

Admin UI

Visit /admin/config/development/generated-content to generate content through the admin interface.

Environment variable

Set GENERATED_CONTENT_CREATE=1 before provisioning to auto-generate content on module install. Optionally filter:

GENERATED_CONTENT_ITEMS="taxonomy_term-tags,node-article"

Example in Vortex

The ys_demo module ships two generated content plugins:

• TaxonomyTermTags — generates 5 taxonomy terms in the tags vocabulary
• NodeArticle — generates 20 article nodes referencing generated tags