1Data::Faker(3)        User Contributed Perl Documentation       Data::Faker(3)
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NAME

6       Data::Faker - Perl extension for generating fake data
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SYNOPSIS

9         use Data::Faker;
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11         my $faker = Data::Faker->new();
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13         print "Name:    ".$faker->name."\n";
14         print "Company: ".$faker->company."\n";
15         print "Address: ".$faker->street_address."\n";
16         print "         ".$faker->city.", ".$faker->us_state_abbr." ".$faker->us_zip_code."\n";
17

DESCRIPTION

19       This module creates fake (but reasonable) data that can be used for
20       things such as filling databases with fake information during
21       development of database related applications.
22

OBJECT METHODS

24       new()
25           Object constructor.  As a shortcut, you can pass names of plugin
26           modules to load to new(), although this does not actually restrict
27           the functions available to the object, it just causes those plugins
28           to be loaded if they haven't been loaded already. All Data::Faker
29           objects in one interpreter share the plugin data, so that multiple
30           objects don't multiply the memory requirements.
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32       methods();
33           Return a list of the methods that have been provided by all of the
34           loaded plugins.
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36       register_plugin();
37           Plugin modules call register_plugin() to provide data methods.  See
38           any of the included plugin modules for examples.
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LOADING PLUGINS

41       You can specify which plugins to load by including just the base part
42       of their name as an argument when loading the module with 'use'.  For
43       example if you only wanted to use data from the Data::Faker::Name
44       module, you would load Data::Faker like this:
45
46         use Data::Faker qw(Name);
47
48       By default any modules matching Data::Faker::* in any directory in @INC
49       will be loaded.  You can also pass plugin names when calling the new()
50       method, and they will be loaded if not already in memory.  See new().
51

WRITING PLUGINS

53       Writing a plugin to provide new kinds of data is easy, all you have to
54       do is create a module named Data::Faker::SomeModuleName that inherits
55       from Data::Faker.
56
57       To provide data, the plugin merely needs to call the register_plugin
58       function with one or more pairs of function name and function data,
59       like this:
60
61         #!/usr/bin/perl -w
62         use strict;
63         use warnings;
64         use Data::Faker;
65
66         my $faker = Data::Faker->new();
67         print "My fake data is ".$faker->some_data_function."\n";
68
69         package Data::Faker::SomeData;
70         use base 'Data::Faker';
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72         __PACKAGE__->register_plugin(
73           some_data_function => [qw(foo bar baz gazonk)],
74           another_data_item => sub { return '$some_data_function' },
75         );
76
77       The first argument is the method that will be made available to your
78       object, the second is a data source.  If the data source is not a
79       reference, it will simply be returned as the data, if it is a reference
80       to an array, a random element from the array will be returned, and if
81       it is a subroutine reference, the subroutine will be run and the
82       results will be returned.  The data that your data source provides is
83       checked for two things, tokens (that look like perl variables, starting
84       with a $), and numeric indicators (#).  Any tokens found will be
85       replaced with their values, and any numeric indicators will be replaced
86       with random numbers.  You can include a literal $ or # by prefacing it
87       with a backslash.  If you load more than one module that defines the
88       same function, it has an additive effect, when the function is called
89       one of the data sources provided will be selected at random and then it
90       will be called to get a piece of data.
91
92       Some data source examples:
93
94         __PACKAGE__->register_plugin(
95           age              => ['#','##'],
96           monetary_amount  => ['\$####.##','\$###.##', '\$##.##', '\$#.##'],
97           adult_age        => sub { int(rand(70)+18) },
98         );
99
100       If your data source is a code reference, it will receive the calling
101       object as an argument so you can build data out of other data if you
102       need to.  See Data::Faker::DateTime for some examples of this.
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BUGS AND KNOWN ISSUES

105       There is no way to selectively remove data sources from a plugin that
106       was loaded, even if you didn't load it.
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SEE ALSO

109       Text::Lorem
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AUTHOR

112       Jason Kohles, <email@jasonkohles.com>
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115       Copyright 2004-2005 by Jason Kohles
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117       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
118       under the same terms as Perl itself.
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122perl v5.36.0                      2023-01-20                    Data::Faker(3)
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