Skip to contents

charlatan

charlatan makes fake data, inspired from and borrowing some code from Python’s faker (https://github.com/joke2k/faker)

Make fake data for:

  • person names
  • jobs
  • phone numbers
  • colors: names, hex, rgb
  • credit cards
  • DOIs
  • numbers in range and from distributions
  • gene sequences
  • geographic coordinates
  • emails
  • URIs, URLs, and their parts
  • IP addresses
  • more coming …

Possible use cases for charlatan:

  • Students in a classroom setting learning any task that needs a dataset.
  • People doing simulations/modeling that need some fake data
  • Generate fake dataset of users for a database before actual users exist
  • Complete missing spots in a dataset
  • Generate fake data to replace sensitive real data with before public release
  • Create a random set of colors for visualization
  • Generate random coordinates for a map
  • Get a set of randomly generated DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) to assign to fake scholarly artifacts
  • Generate fake taxonomic names for a biological dataset
  • Get a set of fake sequences to use to test code/software that uses sequence data

Reasons to use charlatan:

  • Light weight, few dependencies
  • Relatively comprehensive types of data, and more being added
  • Comprehensive set of languages supported, more being added
  • Useful R features such as creating entire fake data.frame’s

Installation

cran version

install.packages("charlatan")

dev version

remotes::install_github("ropensci/charlatan")
library("charlatan")
#> Error in library("charlatan"): there is no package called 'charlatan'
set.seed(12345)

high level function

… for all fake data operations

x <- fraudster()
#> Error in fraudster(): could not find function "fraudster"
x$job()
#> Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos): object 'x' not found
x$name()
#> Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos): object 'x' not found
x$color_name()
#> Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos): object 'x' not found

locale support

Adding more locales through time, e.g.,

Locale support for job data

ch_job(locale = "en_US", n = 3)
#> Error in ch_job(locale = "en_US", n = 3): could not find function "ch_job"
ch_job(locale = "fr_FR", n = 3)
#> Error in ch_job(locale = "fr_FR", n = 3): could not find function "ch_job"
ch_job(locale = "hr_HR", n = 3)
#> Error in ch_job(locale = "hr_HR", n = 3): could not find function "ch_job"
ch_job(locale = "uk_UA", n = 3)
#> Error in ch_job(locale = "uk_UA", n = 3): could not find function "ch_job"
ch_job(locale = "zh_TW", n = 3)
#> Error in ch_job(locale = "zh_TW", n = 3): could not find function "ch_job"

For colors:

ch_color_name(locale = "en_US", n = 3)
#> Error in ch_color_name(locale = "en_US", n = 3): could not find function "ch_color_name"
ch_color_name(locale = "uk_UA", n = 3)
#> Error in ch_color_name(locale = "uk_UA", n = 3): could not find function "ch_color_name"

More coming soon …

generate a dataset 

ch_generate()
#> Error in ch_generate(): could not find function "ch_generate"
ch_generate("job", "phone_number", n = 30)
#> Error in ch_generate("job", "phone_number", n = 30): could not find function "ch_generate"

person name 

ch_name()
#> Error in ch_name(): could not find function "ch_name"
ch_name(10)
#> Error in ch_name(10): could not find function "ch_name"

phone number 

ch_phone_number()
#> Error in ch_phone_number(): could not find function "ch_phone_number"
ch_phone_number(10)
#> Error in ch_phone_number(10): could not find function "ch_phone_number"

job 

ch_job()
#> Error in ch_job(): could not find function "ch_job"
ch_job(10)
#> Error in ch_job(10): could not find function "ch_job"

credit cards 

ch_credit_card_provider()
#> Error in ch_credit_card_provider(): could not find function "ch_credit_card_provider"
ch_credit_card_provider(n = 4)
#> Error in ch_credit_card_provider(n = 4): could not find function "ch_credit_card_provider"
ch_credit_card_number()
#> Error in ch_credit_card_number(): could not find function "ch_credit_card_number"
ch_credit_card_number(n = 10)
#> Error in ch_credit_card_number(n = 10): could not find function "ch_credit_card_number"
ch_credit_card_security_code()
#> Error in ch_credit_card_security_code(): could not find function "ch_credit_card_security_code"
ch_credit_card_security_code(10)
#> Error in ch_credit_card_security_code(10): could not find function "ch_credit_card_security_code"

Usage in the wild

Contributors

If you would like to contribute, see CONTRIBUTING (on github)

similar art

Meta

  • Please report any issues or bugs.
  • License: MIT
  • Get citation information for charlatan in R doing citation(package = 'charlatan')
  • Please note that this package is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.