Request for contrib project: test data generator application

Development
1

Hi everyone,

Since I’m going to have frequent need to fill instances with data, I worked on a helper to automate this a bit, and I would like to publish it.

In that first version you just indicate a number of documents and a number of users and it will generate:

  • the indicated number of documents with various sizes (content, xobject, attachments)
  • the indicated number of users, watching various numbers of the generated documents

Implementation details: I made sure to implement something that fit in a single page and has no dependency so that it’s easy to also import the XAR or just copy/paste its content in your wiki, depending on your constraints.

So far my idea for the name is lipsum, but if you have better ideas, don’t hesitate.

2

+1 for the concept

-1 for lipsum. I like the idea, but I don’t think it’s good for discoverability (I would never think to search for that to find this kind of extension)

I found a list of test data generators.
So anything with generator is fine with me.

Maybe fake-data-generator or mock-data-generator?

3

My first idea was to name it something lie “data-generator” (that’s the name of the page currently, actually) but while writing the proposal I thought about trying to find something that looks more like a name and less like a description (for once :)).

Honestly I don’t have a strong opinion for the name, which is why I asked for better ideas.

4

Another name I like a bit better is test-data-generator.

Another idea is test-data-seeder (“Seeding” is the industry-standard term for populating a database with initial or test data), or synthetic-data-seeder (Synthetic data is data that has been generated artificially so that it mimics real-world data. As such, it retains the original data’s characteristics, but without corresponding to any actual real-world information).

synthetic-data-generator also works well.

Thanks

5

I’m wondering if the name is such a big problem for discoverability, as long as the summary is mentioning that it’s about generating test data (the summary is searched too by default in Extensions).

6

I think that’s my preference by far ATM. It’s the most accurate from what I understand. Either that one or synthetic-data-seeder.

I’m also -0/-1 for lipsum as I think it’s too far from what it is IMO (I would understand it as generating some fake page content), and I see no reason to make it more cryptic than it could be. I like the creativity of it though :wink:

7

I think “generator” is probably safer than “seeder” in terms of what people will search for.

8

+1, I don’t think I would ever think of the word “seeder” to look for think kind of extension (but, ymmv).