NAME
    Data::Faker - Perl extension for generating fake data

SYNOPSIS
      use Data::Faker;

      my $faker = Data::Faker->new();

      print "Name:    ".$faker->name."\n";
      print "Company: ".$faker->company."\n";
      print "Address: ".$faker->street_address."\n";
      print "         ".$faker->city.", ".$faker->us_state_abbr." ".$faker->us_zip_code."\n";

DESCRIPTION
    This module creates fake (but reasonable) data that can be used for
    things such as filling databases with fake information during
    development of database related applications.

OBJECT METHODS
    new()
        Object constructor. As a shortcut, you can pass names of plugin
        modules to load to new(), although this does not actually restrict
        the functions available to the object, it just causes those plugins
        to be loaded if they haven't been loaded already. All Data::Faker
        objects in one interpreter share the plugin data, so that multiple
        objects don't multiply the memory requirements.

    methods();
        Return a list of the methods that have been provided by all of the
        loaded plugins.

    register_plugin();
        Plugin modules call register_plugin() to provide data methods. See
        any of the included plugin modules for examples.

LOADING PLUGINS
    You can specify which plugins to load by including just the base part of
    their name as an argument when loading the module with 'use'. For
    example if you only wanted to use data from the Data::Faker::Name
    module, you would load Data::Faker like this:

      use Data::Faker qw(Name);

    By default any modules matching Data::Faker::* in any directory in @INC
    will be loaded. You can also pass plugin names when calling the new()
    method, and they will be loaded if not already in memory. See new().

WRITING PLUGINS
    Writing a plugin to provide new kinds of data is easy, all you have to
    do is create a module named Data::Faker::SomeModuleName that inherits
    from Data::Faker.

    To provide data, the plugin merely needs to call the register_plugin
    function with one or more pairs of function name and function data, like
    this:

      #!/usr/bin/perl -w
      use strict;
      use warnings;
      use Data::Faker;

      my $faker = Data::Faker->new();
      print "My fake data is ".$faker->some_data_function."\n";

      package Data::Faker::SomeData;
      use base 'Data::Faker';

      __PACKAGE__->register_plugin(
        some_data_function => [qw(foo bar baz gazonk)],
        another_data_item => sub { return '$some_data_function' },
      );

    The first argument is the method that will be made available to your
    object, the second is a data source. If the data source is not a
    reference, it will simply be returned as the data, if it is a reference
    to an array, a random element from the array will be returned, and if it
    is a subroutine reference, the subroutine will be run and the results
    will be returned. The data that your data source provides is checked for
    two things, tokens (that look like perl variables, starting with a $),
    and numeric indicators (#). Any tokens found will be replaced with their
    values, and any numeric indicators will be replaced with random numbers.
    You can include a literal $ or # by prefacing it with a backslash. If
    you load more than one module that defines the same function, it has an
    additive effect, when the function is called one of the data sources
    provided will be selected at random and then it will be called to get a
    piece of data.

    Some data source examples:

      __PACKAGE__->register_plugin(
        age              => ['#','##'],
        monetary_amount  => ['\$####.##','\$###.##', '\$##.##', '\$#.##'],
        adult_age        => sub { int(rand(70)+18) },
      );

    If your data source is a code reference, it will receive the calling
    object as an argument so you can build data out of other data if you
    need to. See Data::Faker::DateTime for some examples of this.

BUGS AND KNOWN ISSUES
    There is no way to selectively remove data sources from a plugin that
    was loaded, even if you didn't load it.

SEE ALSO
    Text::Lorem

AUTHOR
    Jason Kohles, <email@jasonkohles.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    Copyright 2004-2005 by Jason Kohles

    This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself.