vbFaker

These scripts were written to rapidly create large amounts of fake data in a vBulletin 5 installation. In order to do this, it utilizes the vBulletin API.

Installing

To install:

1. Install Composer.
2. Install vBulletin into a web accessible directory.
   • Your vBulletin installation must have a user with the userid of 1.
   • For best results, a number of channels should be created. These can be listed in config.php.
3. Download this repository to your local drive.
4. Open a command line window (cmd, wsl, bash, zsh, etc...)
5. From the command line change to the vbFaker directory.
   • cd /vbulletin/core/vbFaker
6. Run composer update.
7. Rename config.inc.php to config.php
8. Update the variables within config.php to point to your specific vBulletin install.

Dependencies

• Composer is required for this project.
• vBulletin
• PHPFaker/faker - Random data generator.

All dependencies except Composer and vBulletin will be automatically installed by running composer update.

Usage

Each task is run from the commandline of the vbFaker directory.

Ex: php createUsers.php

Tasks

Each task is its own file within the vbFaker directory. Please read the comments at the top of the file for additional instructions required for each task.

• createUsers.php: Creates a random number of users between specified min and max values. These users have:

  • username - combination of first name and last name from several locales. (Can contain UTF-8)
  • email addresses - firstname.lastname@domain.com (UTF-8 characters are stripped via iconv)
  • randomized passwords
  • random IP addresses.
  • Users are placed in random usergroups.

• createPosts.php: Creates a random number of topics and replies in Forum Channels from a specified list.

  • Topic Starter has a random length of Lorem Ipsum text.
  • Topics have random authors.
  • Topics will have a random number of replies between 0 and 100.
  • Tags will be randomly created for each topic.
  • Replies have random authors
  • Replies will reference the Topic ID
  • Replies have a random length of Lorem Ipsum text.

Notes

1. It is recommended to change the following settings within your vBulletin Installation.

• Settings -> Human Verification - Disable this functionality.
• Settings -> Options -> Message Posting and Editing Options - Disable Floodcheck.

2. If your list of channels does not match the array in config.php then you must update this array. It is the comma separated list within the [] of line #7. Default Line:

$channels = [62,63,64,65,66,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76];

3. When creating users, the current code expects two custom usergroups. On a new installation, these will have the usergroup IDs of 14 and 15. If you do not want to use these custom usergroups, you will need to modify the posters array in config.php as well as createUsers.php.

4. You will probably experience out of memory errors in the vBulletin API if PHP Max Memory is not set to 256 MB or higher.

Ideas for improvement.

• The ability to create topics with other content types.
• Command line parameters to control amount of items created.
• Menu system that accepts parameters.

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License

vbFaker is licensed under the MIT License.

A valid vBulletin license is required to use vbFaker. This can be obtained at vBulletin.com