Generating Fake Data in C# with Bogus

Having data to test with is important. Whether you want to create unit tests that better replicate the real world or you want to insert sample data in the database, the key is to have representative data without spending a lot of time generating it.
That's where the Bogus library comes in. This open-source NuGet package allows us to quickly generate fake data that can be used for any number of purposes in our application or our database. In this video, we are going to look at how to quickly spin up an application that makes use of fake data that is generated by Bogus.
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[@d3tn3tracer]

Thank you Tim! Our team is learning Unit Tests right now and you have one about Bogus. Thank you for your work for community! 😊

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@YazanGplay]

This is the second time you upload a problem solving video after I discuss with my colleague about it. Yesterday we were discussing how should we seed the database every time we run a new instance in docker. Very useful video, Thanks Tim!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Just keep talking near my hidden microphone. 😉

[@steveclarke8720]

As always great demos and instruction. Perfectly timed as I am creating large sets of data for a product demo.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@lukaszrutkowski]

Thank you Tim for all your and your team work. I have learned tons from your courses library (each course is a masterpiece on it's own), as well as from YT. Cannot wait for new things :) PS. Bogus is a Polish name :))

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome! I’m glad my content has been so helpful.

[@EluviumMC]

Great find and demonstration of this library! Thanks for sharing!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@troybryantIII]

Started a new project and this was the testing suit selected. Life saver...

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@tresaidh3y90]

Amazing as always Tim! Thanks so much!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@jesusdelarua5995]

Great video!!! Thank you Tim.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@claudiocespon4128]

Thanks Tim! This seems to be an excellent tool to test database performance degradation too!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@CodeLlama]

This is awesome! I can see a lot of use cases!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@MrMAbukhadra]

Great tool for testing the application. Thank you

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome!

[@KorruFreez]

Bogus is extremely helpful, thanks for the video!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@ahmeddabas]

as always , great video thanx bro

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@dmytrohryhsyn8382]

Thank you Tim. I started to implement random generator by myself. I should probably google for existing solutions at first :)

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@khangle6872]

having worked with many frameworks across languages, I do see the appeal of a heavy battery-included framework. The industry nowadays tend toward micro-framework that start out small and open for plugin or addon to expand functionality, and we add things as we need it. Which make sense in its own right But for heavy frameworks, everything is streamlined and function with each other much more coherent. Laravel, for example, had almost every layer of a typical application built into its core. The DataGenerator, which they called DatabaseFactory, and the Seeder itself where you define the rule for each model, using the popular FakerPHP that they also maintain; are all configured in the fresh installation of the framework. Which, also heavily documented. Also, things like data-aware input validation. Even something that could be as simple as "username must be unique" can be quite a hassle in Python Flask or Java Spring Boot, or even Asp.net, since the data access isnt really a part of the framework. Though it do open for us the freedom to choose our Orm. I really miss 'username' => [ 'required', 'unique:users,email_address', 'max:20', 'min:10' ],

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks for sharing.

[@andywalter7426]

Did you know that bogus had a dumpstring method. If you used the DumpString method, it would return the json. Then a normal class for the model would be fine.

[@HollandHiking]

I like it a lot, but for other countries than the US you may need to create extensions, f.i. to generate valid phone numbers, addresses, and ZIP codes. For example, the Dutch ZIP code is structured like this: four digits, a space and the two characters like 2231 ZZ. I have seen you can do that. I will give it a try.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You can do that. Here is an issue with an example of how to do so: github.com/bchavez/Bogus/issues/242

[@M0nedula]

Is there a way to generate data specific for a country? Zip codes have different formats. Maybe use names of people and streets and cities that can occur in a country?

[@IAmTimCorey]

For zip codes, you can format them for any region using the region pattern: github.com/bchavez/Bogus/issues/242

[@marcoguerra6349]

Interesting, for sure it can be useful

[@IAmTimCorey]

I’m glad.

[@microtech2448]

Hi, how is it possible to give sequential Id instead of random?

[@killpopers]

Always use this for unit testing it ensures you don't have know values in your test for values that don't need to be fixed forcing the dev to think about the logic not the data.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@hadrien03]

Wow, I was just checking fake data libraries for a work project today!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@harrivayrynen]

Any news when monthly pass is available. Would be nice to try it before going to year pass.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Very soon but I don’t have a date. Email [e-mail] and Tom can probably get you in early.

[@agentsmith8434]

Great video. Do you have a video about Repository Pattern?

[@IAmTimCorey]

Not yet.

[@agentsmith8434]

@@IAmTimCorey Thanks you

[@MarioStaats]

awesome idea to save it in the DB, to have "real environment" Test Data *ThumbUp

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks!

[@h.jpouya4715]

Awesome

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks!

[@rodrigo6459]

Is there a way to correlate a name with an enum for gender?

[@anassnassim]

thank you for this tutorial is there any way for exemple with this nuget or anything else if i send him as string "CityName" return This Is A City in bogus is these possible ?

[@IAmTimCorey]

I'm not sure what you want to do here. Sorry.

[@anassnassim]

​@@IAmTimCorey First thank you for your replay I want to develop an app using C#. The app should receive a string, for example, 'FullName,' and generate fake data that represents a name. I'm uncertain if there's a package available to assist with this or if I'll need to utilize 'bogus' and potentially some conditional statements to achieve the desired result.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Bogus plus conditionals is probably your best bet.

[@anassnassim]

@@IAmTimCorey ok thank you so much

[@JorijnLamberink]

Decent introduction to Bogus. The demonstration could have been more to the point, now we have a 36 minute video without chapters filled with a hole bunch of blazor azor content.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Well, it sounds like you got more than you paid for, so that’s good.

[@manilladrift]

​@@IAmTimCorey clever response 😅