Generating test data using the Faker package

If you need to generate fake data for any reason then faker is the python package for you.

Installation

You can install this easily using pip like this

pip install Faker

From there, we create a Faker ‘generator’ on which we will make the many calls for our generated data:

from faker import Faker
fake = Faker()

Faker has numerous built in providers, here are

faker.providers
faker.providers.address
faker.providers.automotive
faker.providers.bank
faker.providers.barcode
faker.providers.color
faker.providers.company
faker.providers.credit_card
faker.providers.currency
faker.providers.date_time
faker.providers.file
faker.providers.geo
faker.providers.internet
faker.providers.isbn
faker.providers.job
faker.providers.lorem
faker.providers.misc
faker.providers.person
faker.providers.phone_number
faker.providers.profile
faker.providers.python
faker.providers.ssn
faker.providers.user_agent

Here’s a list of Providers written by the community:

You can also change the default locale from english to another language

Code examples

This example would generate 10 fake email accounts

#!/usr/bin/python

from faker import Faker
fake = Faker()

print (fake.name())

for _ in range(10):
  print(fake.name(),fake.ascii_free_email())

This example expands on generating fake email data

#!/usr/bin/python

from faker import Faker

fake = Faker()

print(f'Email: {fake.ascii_company_email()}')
print(f'Email: {fake.ascii_email()}')
print(f'Email: {fake.ascii_free_email()}')
print(f'Email: {fake.ascii_safe_email()}')
print(f'Email: {fake.company_email()}')