FakerLib.Net

This is the official repository of the FakerLib.Net dummy data generator library for .NET

What is FakerLib.Net?

FakerLib.Net is a simple .NET Core package that can be used to create dummy (fake) list of collections. That is, populate any type of collections (List) (Enumerables) with random data of different sorts : Name, Cities, Phonenumbers, Countries, ZipCodes, UUIDs, Addresses, IPAddresses, URLs, Websites, EmailAddresses, ImageURLs etc. It could be used to populate DB's, collections and so on during development and testing.

Where can I get it?

First, install NuGet. Then, install FakerLib.Net from the package manager console:

PM> Install-Package FakerLib.Net

Or from the .NET CLI as:

dotnet add package FakerLib.Net

How do I get started?

First, configure FakerLib.Net FakerFactory to let it know what properties of a type (e.g class) do want to generate fake/dummy for by annotating each property of choice by a FakeAttribute like below: For instance, for a model class of Person, you would configure like below:

public class Person
{
        [Fake(FakerType.Name)]
        public string Name { get; set; }
        [Fake(FakerType.City)]
        public string City { get; set; }
        [Fake(FakerType.Phone)]
        public string Phone { get; set; }
        public string HouseAddress { get; set; } = string.Empty;
}

All FakerTypes that you can use

public enum FakerType
    {
        Name = 0,
        Sentence = 1,
        ImageUrl = 2,
        Phone = 3,
        City = 4,
        Country = 5,
        TextParagraph = 6,
        Website = 7,
        IpAddress = 8,
        Guid = 9,
        GuidString = 10,
        DateTime = 11,
        Numeric = 12,
        Address = 13,
        EmailAddress = 14,
        ZipCode = 15,
        Url = 16
    }

Then anywhere in your application code where you need a list of type(Person) filled with dummy data, use below.

var fakerFactory = new FakerFactory();
var dummyListOfPersons = fakerFactory.Setup<Person>(typeof(Person), 5) //meaning to generate 5 items of this type(Person) of dummy data.

OR you can use Dependency Injection by registering FakerFactory in your startup.cs DI container like below

//For .NET 6 and above
builder.Services.AddFakerFactory();

//For .NET 5 and below
services.AddFakerFactory();

//then you can inject typeof(IFakerFactory) into any class's constructor and make use of it. 
private readonly IFakerFactory _fakerFactory;
public PersonService(IFakerFactory fakerFactory)
{
_fakerFactory = fakerFactory;
}

//Then make use of it somewhere inside this service class like below.
var dummyListOfPersons = _fakerFactory.Setup<Person>(typeof(Person), 5) //meaning to generate 5 items of this type(Person) of dummy data.

Do you have an issue?

If you're facing some problems using the package, file an issue above.

License, etc.

And this project was first inspired in 2019 by the Faker Library in PHP Laravel. Not until now was it made real for C# .NET.