Create Sample Fake Data In Python | Faker Module

 

Create fake data in python

Be it web application development or REST API development, be it data science or machine learning, Data is involved in all the fields of computer science. And as Python developers, we may need some sample fake data in our hands to either test any application's data flow or maybe just for learning how machine learning models work. 

In both cases, it would be nice to have a tool within our arsenal, capable of generating sample fake data in the blink of an eye. And that's exactly what python's faker library does.

What is the faker library?

According to the library's official documentation, "Faker is a python package capable of generating random fake data.". This library is inspired by its counterparts in other programming languages like PHP Faker, Perl Faker, and Ruby Faker.

We'll understand more about its functionality and capabilities as we progress through the course.

Getting Started

Installation

To get started, make sure you have Python 3 set up properly within your system along with pip. If you are not sure how to get started, have a look at this video.

We will start by installing faker package. Open the command prompt through windows (or shell in MacOS or Linux) and type

For Windows:

pip install faker

For MacOS/Linux:

pip3 install faker

Next, wait for the installation to complete. Once it's done, we can move on to importing the module onto our python script.

Import

Within the command prompt (or shell), type

python

to open the python shell. Next, we will import the Faker class from the faker module by typing

from faker import Faker

Once the import is done, we will create an object of the Faker class to generate data, let's name the object fake_obj for now. We will write

# create Faker class object
fake_obj = Faker()

Now we can use the fake_obj object to generate fake data.

Generating Fake Data

The faker package has multiple different functions created to generate a variety of data. This, included with the functions contributed by the community are a lot to cover in a single blog, but we will quickly go through few of them one by one, just to get an idea how it work.

Generating person's identity details

Using "faker.providers.person" provider, we can generate a variety of a person's personal identity data like firstname, lastname, prefix, suffix etc. For ex:

# get first name
fake_obj.first_name()

# get last name
fake_obj.last_name()

# get name prefix
fake_obj.prefix()

# get name suffix
fake_obj.suffix()

Generating date and time details

Using "faker.providers.date_time" provider, we can generate random date and time details in various formats. For ex:

To get a random date between any two dates

# import datetime
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

# current date minus 365 days
start_date = datetime.now() - timedelta(days=365)

# current date
end_date = datetime.now()

# get random date between start_date and end_date
# if you call this function without passing start_date and end_date

# then a random date is generated between 30 years old date and current
    date
fake_obj.date_between(start_date, end_date)

To get a random time between any two times

  
  # works similar to date_between, but also generates a
  # random time
  fake_obj.date_time_between(start_date, end_date)

Generating user profile details

Using "faker.providers.profile", we can generate random user profile data including details like job, company, ssn, residence etc.

  # generate fake profile
  fake_obj.profile()

The generated profile data looks like this:

    
{
  "job": "Musician",
  "company": "Williams-Sheppard",
  "ssn": "498-52-4970",
  "residence": "Unit 5938 Box 2421\nDPO AP 33335",
  "current_location": (Decimal("52.958961"),
      Decimal("143.143712")),
  "blood_group": "B+",
  "website": [
  "http://www.rivera.com/",
  "http://grimes-green.net/",
  "http://www.larsen.com/"
  ],
  "username": "leeashley",
  "name": "Gary Cross",
  "sex": "M",
  "address": "711 Golden Overpass\nWest Andreaville, OH
      44115",
  "mail": "tamaramorrison@hotmail.com",
  "birthdate": datetime.date(1946,4,11)
  }

Generating paragraph and sentence data

Using "faker.providers.lorem", we can generate fake paragraphs and sentences.

# to generate random paragraph
fake_obj.paragraph()

# to generate random sentence
fake_obj.sentence()

Conclusion

There are multiple standard and community providers that can generate a variety of random data like airport names, credit scores, etc.

To get a list of all community providers, view this page.