Placeholder.com is no longer a random image generating site

[browner12]

Summary

https://placeholder.com/ is no longer a random image generating site, but rather a warehouse space searching site (lol).

Currently image generation in this project relies on placeholder.com

https://fakerphp.github.io/formatters/image/

This URL is hardcoded here:

Faker/src/Faker/Provider/Image.php

Line 13 in 275f172

public const BASE_URL = 'https://via.placeholder.com';

To fix I would propose we pick a new default random image generating site, and possibly in addition also allow users to customize this.

[pimjansen]

The method is already deprecated so i guess we wont change much on it and suggest to create your own provider instead

[browner12]

Maybe a deprecated note in the docs?

[crossiatlas]

For anyone else who found this Issue via Google, currently (as of 29 March 2023) Placeholder is technically still working even though the main website is now for an unrelated Warehousing business.

For example:
https://via.placeholder.com/640x480.png/004466?text=animals+omnis
Returns this image:

However, we're relying on the generosity of the new owner (assuming it is someone new) to keep this service running, so it wouldn't surprise me if it shutdown at some point.

Alternatives

(A couple that I found which might be a good starting point for others)

Faker Images Provider
https://github.com/morawskim/faker-images
This one includes support for several alternative online image generators, specifically picsum.photos, lorem.space, and lorem.faces

Faker Billions Images
https://github.com/bilions-org/faker-bilions-images
This one uses the GD library to generate simple test images with text, so it doesn't rely on any third-party online services (definitely useful if you're using Faker as part of an automated test suite).

Ideally I'd like to find one which supports both online generates and GD images so I have a choice (GD images for automated tests, online images for my dev environment) but this may not exist.

I'm sure there are many more alternatives out there but that's probably outside the scope of this thread.

[stale]

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