IdolHands.com :: Days in the Life of an Alpha Geek
Using Faker to Pre-Populate a Dev Database
I'm currently working on a project to create a travel website, and I needed to have a bunch of member profiles to use for testing the member directory. I came across a great Ruby gem called Faker which I've used to create the dummy accounts.
Installation is easy, of course: gem install Faker
Next, I created a Rake task for populating the accounts:
namespace :db do
namespace :development do
desc "Create user records in the development database."
task :fake_user_data => :environment do
require 'faker'
@countries = ["United States", "Canada", "United Kingdom", "Germany", "Mexico"]
@genders = ["Male","Female"]
@privacy = ["members", "public"]
def randomDate(params={})
years_back = params[:year_range] || 5
latest_year = params [:year_latest] || 0
year = (rand * (years_back)).ceil + (Time.now.year - latest_year - years_back)
month = (rand * 12).ceil
day = (rand * 31).ceil
series = [date = Time.local(year, month, day)]
if params[:series]
params[:series].each do |some_time_after|
series << series.last + (rand * some_time_after).ceil
end
return series
end
date
end
100.times do
u = User.new(
:first_name => Faker::Name.first_name,
:last_name => Faker::Name.last_name,
:birthdate => randomDate(:year_range => 60, :year_latest => 22),
:created_at => randomDate(:year_range => 4, :year_latest => 0),
:city => Faker::Lorem.words(1).to_s.capitalize,
:state => Faker::Address.us_state(),
:country => @countries.rand.to_s,
:password => "greatpasswordhuh",
:password_confirmation => "greatpasswordhuh",
:accepts_terms_and_conditions => true,
:gender => @genders.rand.to_s,
:email => Faker::Internet.email
)
u.extended_profile = ExtendedProfile.new(
:bio => Faker::Lorem.sentences(5).join(" "),
:occupation => Faker::Lorem.words(1).to_s.capitalize
)
u.preferences = Preferences.new()
u.save!
end
end
end
end
Note that while Faker was good for creating random names, e-mail addresses, etc., I needed some other data that was outside of its scope, for example gender and country. For these, I simply created an array (like @genders = ["Male","Female"]) and called @genders.rand to pick a value. I also used its Lorem Ipsum generator to create random city names, occupations, and biographical text.
Once the Rake task was written, it was simply a matter of typing rake db:development:fake_user_data to populate the database with my junk records. Pretty sweet!
You can find Faker at http://faker.rubyforge.org/.
Comments
cdmwebs
February 7, 2008 at 6:08 AMNice! I wrote one a lot like this <a href="http://26webs.com/blog/2008/02/02/a-rake-task-for-faker/" rel="nofollow">here</a>.
