Python is one of those languages where if you can concieve it, there is probably already a library for it.

One great library is Faker - this makes the generation of sensible test data much easier and removes a lot of the issues around having to using unrealistic junk values when creating it on your own.

There is lots to see, and your probably best off reading the docs, but this is to give you an overview.

Installation

Installation is simple, just use pip to install;

pip install faker

Usage

Now that you have it installed, you can use python REPL or ptpython to have a play.

### Some basics

from faker import Factory

fake = Factory.create()
fake.first_name(), fake.last_name(), fake.email()

This will give you a tuple with a random name and email;

('Mary', 'Bennett', 'jamesrodriguez@hotmail.com')

Localisation

If you want to get UK post codes, you can tell the factory a localisation to use when generating the data;

from faker import Factory

fake = Factory.create('en_GB')

fake.street_address(), fake.postcode()

which will yield;

('Studio 54\nCollins fork', 'L2 7XP')

Synchronising Multiple Fakes

Everytime you call a method on the fake object you get a new value. If you wanted to synchronise two fake objects you can use the seed. This will mean that the each consecutive call from each fake will return the same value.

This is probably more easily demonstrated in code;

from faker import Factory

fake1 = Factory.create()
fake2 = Factory.create()

fake1.seed(12345)
fake2.seed_instance(12345)

fake1.name(), fake2.name()
fake1.name(), fake2.name()

This will result in a tuple containing the same name across synchronised fake objects.

('Adam Bryan', 'Adam Bryan')
('Jacob Lee', 'Jacob Lee')

Making it a bit more interesting

In a previous pose I fiddled with credit card data where I created test data. Faker can be used to help out here. The code below isn’t an example of amazing Python, its just simple code to show it working.

First, we bring in the imports that are going to be used;

import csv
import random
from faker import Factory
from faker.providers import credit_card

Some helper methods, these are just to keep things clean

def get_transaction_amount():
    return round(random.randint(1, 1000) * random.random(), 2)

def get_transaction_date(fake):
    return fake.date_time_between(start_date='-30y', end_date='now').isoformat()

Some more helpers for the creation of records for our customer and transaction

def create_customer_record(customer_id):
    fake = Factory.create('en_GB')
    return [customer_id, fake.first_name(), fake.last_name(), fake.street_address().replace('\n', ', '), fake.city(), fake.postcode(), fake.email()]

def create_financials_record(customer_id):
    fake = Factory.create('en_GB')
    return [customer_id, fake.credit_card_number(), get_transaction_amount(), get_transaction_date(fake)]

A helper function to save the records to file

def flush_records(records, filename):
    with open(filename, 'a') as file:
        csv_writer=csv.writer(file, delimiter = ',', quotechar = '"', quoting = csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)
        for record in records:
            csv_writer.writerow(record)
    records.clear()

Finally the main calling block to create the records

def create_customer_files(customer_count=100):
    customer_records = []
    financial_records = []
    for id in range(1, customer_count):
        customer_id = str(id).zfill(10)
        customer_records.append(create_customer_record(customer_id))
        financial_records.append(create_financials_record(customer_id))
        if len(customer_records) == 100:
            flush_records(customer_records, 'customer.csv')
            flush_records(financial_records, 'financials.csv')
    flush_records(customer_records, 'customer.csv')
    flush_records(financial_records, 'financials.csv')

create_customer_files()

Once we run this, we’ll have 2 files with customer details and a credit card transaction.

Customer records

0000000001,Clifford,Turner,"Flat 17, Smith crescent",Johnsonborough,DN5 7JJ,ucooper@gmail.com
0000000002,Amy,Clements,"Studio 96s, Anne harbor",Maureenfurt,LA53 8HZ,marshalllee@williams-hart.info
0000000003,Robin,Sinclair,5 Lesley motorway,Bryanbury,E2 9EU,sheilawhitehead@miles.com

Financial records

0000000001,4851450166907,179.28,2009-06-01T07:03:43
0000000002,370196022599953,229.46,2017-12-11T10:14:59
0000000003,4285121047016,10.61,1995-04-23T23:54:19

By sharing the customer ID across both files we have some semblence of referential integrity.

This code only creates a single transaction per customer, it can be easily modified to create multiple transactions by adjusting the create_financial_records to take an optional argument of transaction_count=1 and updating the append to handle an array of arrays ```