Drupal 8 create node programmatically and set alias

Creating Nodes is as simple as creating other entities in Drupal 8. When you have Pathauto installed, you can also create a custom alias and pass a flag for Pathauto so it does not overwrite it with current set of rules.

This can be useful when you need to programmatically create nodes that must have a strict URL that doesn't match the Pathauto patterns.

use Drupal\node\Entity\Node;
use Drupal\pathauto\PathautoState;
 
Node::create([
  'uid' => 1,
  'title' => 'Test page',
  'status' => 1,
  'type' => 'page',
  'body' => [
    'value' => 'Test page with a custom alias',
    'format' => 'full_html',
  ],
  'path' => [
    'alias' => '/custom-alias',
    'pathauto' => PathautoState::SKIP,
  ],
])->save();