chaca

Think your data and let Chaca create it.

Intro

Welcome to Chaca, a powerful library that revolutionizes mock data generation for testing and development. Define the shape of your data once and let Chaca generate realistic, diverse and relational fake data to simulate any scenario for your application.

Chaca is isomorphic: the same API runs in Node.js and in the browser (React, Vue, Svelte, ...). Your bundler automatically picks the right build, so you can generate data on the server, in a script, in the CLI, or straight in the browser.

Features

• Runs everywhere — Node.js and the browser, ESM and CommonJS, with TypeScript types included.
• Batteries included — a large set of data modules (person, address, internet, finance, image, date, ...) ready to use.
• Relational data — model references between schemas with Dataset and chaca.ref(...).
• Multi-format export — serialize to json, csv, yaml, postgresql, java, python, typescript and javascript.
• Dynamic fields — each field can depend on the other fields of the document or on the dataset state.
• CLI included to generate data from a config file.

Installation

npm install chaca

Requires Node.js >= 18 (when used on the server). In the browser, just import it — no configuration needed.

Usage

Define a schema and generate data

import { chaca, modules } from "chaca";

const movieSchema = chaca.schema({
  id: chaca.key(() => modules.id.uuid()),
  authors: {
    type: () => modules.person.fullName({ language: "es" }),
    isArray: { min: 1, max: 3 },
  },
  image: () => modules.image.film(),
  likes: () => modules.datatype.int({ min: 0, max: 500000 }),
  category: chaca.enum(["Horror", "War", "History", "Comedy"]),
  adultMovie: ({ currentFields: docFields }) => {
    return docFields.category === "Horror" || docFields.category === "War";
  },
});

// Generate 20 objects with the defined schema
const docs = await movieSchema.array(20);

/*
[
  {
    id: "4136cd0b-d90b-4af7-b485-5d1ded8db252",
    authors: ["Olivia Gonzalez Gomez", "Santiago Torres Gil"],
    image: "https://loremflickr.com/480/480/film",
    likes: 21456,
    category: "Horror",
    adultMovie: true,
  },
  ...rest, // 19 more documents
];
*/

Serialize in memory — transform() (works in the browser)

transform returns the serialized files in memory ({ filename, content }[]), without touching the filesystem. This is the way to obtain the data in the browser, e.g. to trigger a download.

const files = await movieSchema.transform(20, {
  filename: "movies",
  format: "json",
});

// files[0].filename -> "movies.json"
// files[0].content  -> "[ { ... }, ... ]"  (string, ready to download or display)

Export to files — export() (Node.js only)

export writes the generated data to disk.

await movieSchema.export(20, {
  filename: "movies",
  format: "json",
  location: "./folder",
});

In the browser export is not available (there is no filesystem) and throws a descriptive error. Use transform instead.

Relational data

Use Dataset to generate several related schemas at once, referencing fields across them with chaca.ref("Schema.field").

import { chaca, modules } from "chaca";

const userSchema = chaca.schema({
  id: chaca.key(() => modules.id.uuid()),
  username: () => modules.internet.username(),
});

const postSchema = chaca.schema({
  id: chaca.key(() => modules.id.uuid()),
  title: () => modules.lorem.words(),
  user: chaca.ref("User.id"), // references a User.id value
});

const dataset = chaca.dataset([
  { name: "User", schema: userSchema, documents: 3 },
  { name: "Post", schema: postSchema, documents: 10 },
]);

const data = await dataset.generate(); // { User: [...], Post: [...] }

// Datasets can be serialized too:
const files = await dataset.transform({ filename: "blog", format: "postgresql" });

Data modules

Chaca ships with a batteries-included set of data generators, accessible through modules:

modules.person.fullName();
modules.internet.email();
modules.address.country();
modules.finance.bitcoinAddress();
modules.image.film();
modules.datatype.int({ min: 0, max: 100 });

See the full list in the modules documentation.

Export formats

Both transform and export support these format values:

json · csv · yaml · postgresql · java · python · typescript · javascript

Documentation

Visit our website to read the documentation. Chaca Docs

CLI

See CLI guide

Try our REST API

If you don't want to use our npm package you can use our REST API to create your mock data

Changelog

Detailed changes for each release are documented in the CHANGELOG.md.

Contributing

The Chaca project welcomes all constructive contributions. Contributions take many forms, from code for bug fixes and enhancements, to additions and fixes to documentation, additional tests, triaging incoming pull requests and issues, and more!. See CONTRIBUTING.md

License

MIT