Snowfakery Extras

This is a collection of sample code and directions for creating plugins and providers for Snowfakery. I have a blog post that explain how to create Snowfakery plugins in more detail.

Things you'll need

1. Python 3 (generally recent-ish version).
2. Snowfakery 1.9 or later.
3. Faker module for python (pip3 install Faker).
   1. A Faker sample community provider like Microservice: pip3 install faker-microservice
4. A recipe to work from (see recipes folder).

Creating a fakery provider for Snowfakery

1. Create a directory in your project to hold your plugins.
2. Create a file named __init__.py in that directory to make a package.
3. Create directory for your new provider with the pattern faker_[my_service_name], in my case faker_nonprofit.
4. In the directory create a file named __init__.py this defines the faker provider module.
5. Create your provider in that file (see example for details):
   1. import faker.providers to make sure you have required classes.
   2. Define a series of dictionaries for providers creating text.
   3. Create a class that extends the base: class Provider(faker.providers.BaseProvider):
   4. Define a method that returns the desired values: def nonprofit_name(self):
6. Create test.py in your plugins directory.
7. Add tests to make sure it works cause it helps keep life easy (see example): $ python -m plugins.test

Attach Your Provider to your recipe

1. Open the basic recipe you want to use for testing (start with something simple you already know how to use).
2. Add a new line at the top to load the new plugin: - plugin: plugins.faker_nonprofit
3. Add/Update a field to use the new provider.