DjangoFaker - Django-aware fake data

class anonymizer.base.DjangoFaker

This class is used by the anonymizer.replacers module to generate fake data. It encapsulates some knowledge about Django models and fields to attempt to generate data that fits the constraints of the model.

Methods that are useful for generating random data directly, that are not wrapped by anonymizer.replacers:

simple_pattern(pattern, field=None)

Generates data that matches the given pattern, where pattern is reproduced as it is with ‘#’ replaced by a random digit and ‘?’ with a random letter.

Methods useful for 3rd parties to generate random data that respects Django models:

get_allowed_value(self, source, field)

This method is the part that encapsulates knowledge about Django models and fields, and uses it to return appropriate data.

source is a callable that takes no arguments and returns a piece of fake data. In some cases (such as for unique constraints), it may be necessary for this callable to called more than once, to try to get data that doesn’t violate constraints.

field is the Django model field for which data must be generated. If None, the source callable will be used without further checking.

So far, this method understands and attempts to respect:

• The max_length attribute of fields.
• The unique constraint.

Methods with useful/interesting properties:

name(self, field=None, **kwargs)

Generates a full name, using the ‘<first name> <last name>’ pattern.

first_name(self, field=None, **kwargs)

Returns a randomly selected first name

last_name(self, field=None, **kwargs)

Returns a randomly selected last name

email(self, field=None, **kwargs)

Generates a random email address, using the pattern ‘<initial><last name>@<free email provider>’

username(self, field=None, **kwargs)

Generates a random user name, using the pattern ‘<initial><lastname>’.

These name-related methods have the property that the same underlying first name and last name will be used until you repeat any of the methods. This means that if you use these methods to generate a set of data for a user model, the name/username/email address for a single object will correspond to each other.

For models with unique constraints on one of these fields, there is the complication that django-anonymizer will avoid setting unique fields to already present or already generated values. Sometimes this means that a fake data source must be used more than once to get a unique value, and this can upset the state of the cycle. To avoid this, put fields with a unique constraint at the start of the attributes list.

DjangoFaker has various other methods, most of which delegate to an underlying faker.Faker instance, including ‘street_address’, ‘city’ etc. See the source for more details.