This gem is a port of Perl's Data::Faker library that generates fake data.
It comes in very handy for taking screenshots (taking screenshots for my project, Catch the Best was the original impetus for the creation of this gem), having real-looking test data, and having your database populated with more than one or two records while you're doing development.
- Faker::Name.name => "Christophe Bartell"
- Faker::Internet.email => "[email protected]"
If you want to change your locale with Rails from the default of :en, change config/application.rb, setting config.i18n.locale to whatever locale you want. Change locale rather than default_locale (as suggested by the comments in that file) so that I18n's fallbacks will work properly and Faker can use the formats and data in en.yml (if there is no Faker localization for your locale). If you'd prefer to set default_locale rather than locale, then you'll also need to add config.i18n.fallbacks.defaults = [:en] to your configuration to make the fallbacks work for Faker.
Since you may want to make addresses and other types of data look different depending on where in the world you are (US postal codes vs. UK postal codes, for example), Faker uses the I18n gem to store strings (like state names) and formats (US postal codes are NNNNN while UK postal codes are AAN NAA), allowing you to get different formats by switching locales. Just set Faker::Config.locale to the locale you want, and Faker will take care of the rest.
If you'd like to contribute code or formats/data for another locale, fork the project at github, make your changes, then send a pull request.
Comments and feedback are welcome. Send an email to Benjamin Curtis via the google group.
This code is free to use under the terms of the MIT license.