Mockingbird

Have you ever needed randomly generated data? Maybe you are building mock data for API testing, or you need to check that your UI will look correct when real data comes in. Perhaps you just want to build unit tests that have reasonable test data. Either way, that's what Mockingbird is for.

Mockingbird generates random data of all sorts. And not just numbers and random characters: you can also generate Lorem Ipsum text, reverse regular expression (data that passes a given RegEx), names, identifiers, JSON pattern templates, and more!

Features

There are plenty of features to list here, so they are broken up into categories just like the context menu is. If there is something missing, check the Contributing section below.

Templates

To facilitate making structured data, Mockingbird provides a templating engine to help build these. You can generate data in any format you want, just as: json, yaml, xml, csv, text, etc.. This is possible because the templating engine does not care about the text format, and only cares about it's template tags.

These tags follow a familiar Handlebars style of wrapping the template tag in double-curly-braces {{}}. There are a ton of tag functions you can use, and some even accept arguments to customize them.

See the documentation at Templates for more information.

Regular Expressions

Provided a Regular Expression, Mockingbird will generate random data that conforms to it. This is the most powerful, and easiest way to get data if another generator doesn't work for you. You can provide a full expression with flags, or just the pattern portion.

Example: Given the pattern /[a-z0-9]{3,16}@[a-z0-9]{3,32}\.(?:com|net|org)/i, will generate random "email address" looking text.

0M1cMByJsC8j@aSqqoNXbognNtR2nwAjVe.NET
Wco0nh2A44@i5s9.com
Vtp@U3GTp.neT

For extra flexibility there are commands to create new presets that are saved to your settings so you can recall them later.

Date/Time

• Current Timestamps: Insert the current date/time using the system locale, or using ISO formats. You can specify either date, time, or both.
• Formatted Timestamps: Leveraging Date-FNS you can format the date/time output using the current time.
• Random Timestamps: Generate random days, months, years, and ISO timestamps.

Number

• Math Constants: Insert PI, Euler's Number, or Epsilon easily.
• Random Floats: Generate floats like units, positive, negative, or both. Can specify a range as well.
• Random Integers: Generate integers either signed, or unsigned. Positive, or negative. Even bytes, and shorts (16-bit). You can specify a range as well.
• Hexidecimal: Make hexidecimal numbers with a customizable prefix. Allows for 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit.
• Octals: Make octal numbers with a customizable prefix. Allows for 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit.
• Binary: Make binary numbers with a customizable prefix. Allows for 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit.
• Primes: Using a table of the first 100,000 prime numbers, can insert a random one.
• Percentage: Make a random whole percentage between 0 and 100.
• Degree: Random whole-number degree between 0..360 (non-inclusive).
• Radian: Random radian to 2-digit precision.

Color

• Hexidecimal: Generate a random hexidecimal color (24-bit).
• Simple Hexidecimal: Make a hexidecimal, but with limited precision so the color contrast is higher. Results in less "muddy" colors.
• RGB: Make functional notation RGB colors like CSS accepts, can optionally include an alpha opacity.
• HSL/HSB: Make functional notation HSL/HSB colors like CSS accepts.
• CMYK: Make functional notation CMYK colors using percentages.

Text

• Latin/ASCII: Make characters, or strings to length of letters, numbers, symbols or any combination of them.
• Emojis: Insert emoji characters either using the limited simple block of original smilies, or the extended blocks of Unicode pictograms as well. Warning, not all of them display correctly in VSCode.
• Lorem Ipsum: Create dummy text of either words, sentences, or paragraphs. Can also have them wrapped in HTML <p></p> tags.
• Adjectives: Based on common English adjectives
• Adverbs: Based on common English adverbs
• Nouns: Based on common English nouns

Person

• Names: Generate first names, last names, middle names, full names.
• Phone Numbers: Using US format, common EU formats, or even E.164 format.
• Email: Make an email using known providers
• Age: Generate an age using Normal Distribution for realistic results
• SSN: US Social Security Numbers

Locations

• GPS: Longitude, latitude, different notations, anywhere on the planet.
• Cities: Grab a random city name from the US
• States: Use the state code, or the full name
• Countries: ISO 2-letter codes, and the written name
• Zip Code: US Postal zip code (5 digits)
• Street Address: Make a fake US street address

Miscellaneous

• Boolean: Generate a random "true" or "false".

Contributing

If you have a feature suggestion, or something you want to implement yourself, I'm open to ideas and PRs. The repository is on GitHub. If it's just a request, you can use the Issues page.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Jorge Rebocho for the inspiration with their vscode-random extension.

Uses the following third-party packages:

• date-fns
• lorem-ipsum
• randexp

License

Licensed under Apache 2.0, see the license file at LICENSE for the full text. Copyright 2023 Chris Pikul.