A simple (but extensible) tool for generating large random datasets.
Jen is a combination of a core library and a CLI, used to generate random datasets based on a template. There are existing tools for this purpose, but most of them live in a browser and they're naturally insufficient when it comes to generating large amounts of data. Jen was created to fill the niche of creating larger amounts of data for things like unit tests and database state.
Jen's underlying template syntax is drive by Tera to aid in familiarity and to avoid re-inventing a templating language. On top of this layer, Jen offers many helpers based around randomizing data. Several of these helpers are based on fake, with additional helpers provided where there are gaps. You can naturally attach your own helpers when using Jen programmatically.
Jen will be available via Crates.io, so it can be installed from there directly. You can use Jen either as a command line utility, or directly via the programmatic API.
If you wish to install Jen as a command line utility, you can install it via an easy one-liner in your terminal:
shell
$ cargo install jen
If you wish to use it as a library, you can add it to your Cargo.toml
as a dependency of your application:
toml
[dependencies]
jen = { version = "1.1", default-features = false }
You should disable the default features as it includes several dependencies which are required for the CLI use case. These dependencies are not included in your application when these features are disables.
The first step is to construct a template file which Jen will then use when
generating data. There are many template helpers provided by default, via
the internal jen::helpers module. You can check the documentation for the
latest list of helpers, although a fairly up to date table of helpers can
be found below. Once you have this template, you can
either use Jen via the CLI, or programmatically.
The CLI is fairly simple, with a basic structure of:
shell
$ jen <template>
Using this syntax will generate a random document based on the provided
template (which must be a valid Tera template). There is a basic document
you can test with inside the example directory.
There are various switches you can provide to adjust the output, including the following (at the time of writing, there may be more):
```text FLAGS: -h, --help Prints help information -t, --textual Treat the input as textual, rather than JSON -V, --version Prints version information
OPTIONS:
-a, --amount
The Jen CLI was written under the assumption that you're dealing with JSON
documents, and most of the options and features revolve around this being
the case. If you're not using JSON, you can provide the -r flag to treat
the incoming data as "raw". In this case many options will have no effect
(such as pretty printing), but templating can still be carried out properly.
During development, Jen had options to combined and prettify JSON inputs. This was removed to keep things simple, and to allow Jen to support more input types. Instead it is recommended to use jq for these purposes.
For a complete and up to date list of options, please use jen -h in your
terminal.
The programmatic API is pretty simple. Everything is handled through the
use of the Generator struct, which implements the Iterator trait to
provide continuous (lazy) documents.
Generators are constructed using a path to a template on disk, and you
then generate documents using the Iterator methods, as shown below.
```rust let mut generator = Generator::new("./example/example.tera") .expect("provided a value template");
for document in generator.take(5) { println!("{}", document); } ```
This will generate five documents from the provided template and print them to the terminal.
Below is a list of current helpers (at the time of writing). Please see the documentation uploaded to Crates.io for an up-to-date listing.
| Helper | Description | |----------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------| | bool() | Generates a random boolean value | | city() | Generates a random city name | | company() | Generates a random company name | | domain() | Generates a random domain name | | email() | Generates a random email address | | firstName() | Generates a random first name | | float(start=f64::MIN, end=f64::MAX) | Generates a random float value between two bounds | | index() | Retrieves the current index of the generated document | | industry() | Generates a random industry type | | integer(start=i64::MIN, end=i64::MAX) | Generates a random integer value between two bounds | | lastName() | Generates a random last name | | latitude() | Generates a random latitude location value | | longitude() | Generates a random longitude location value | | name() | Generates a random full name | | objectId() | Generates a random object identifier | | paragraph() | Generates a random paragraph of Lorem Ipsum | | phone() | Generates a random phone number | | postcode() | Generates a random postcode value | | profession() | Generates a random job profession | | random(values=["red","blue","yellow"]) | Retrieves a random value from the provided values | | sentence() | Generates a random sentence of Lorem Ipsum | | state() | Retrieves a random US state name | | stateCode() | Retrieves a random US state code | | street() | Generates a random street name | | timestamp() | Generates a random timestamp value in seconds | | title() | Generates a random job title | | userAgent() | Generates a random browser user agent | | username() | Generates a random account username | | uuid() | Generates a v4 UUID | | word() | Retrieves a random word of Lorem Ipsum | | zip() | Generates a random US zip code |