Easy user data with TextExpander

Or, Gavin should stop just reposting README's from his Github projects.

Although automated testing removes a lot of the need for manual click-this-button-make-sure-this-works development work there always comes a point where you need to roll up your sleeves and start dicking about in the browser.

I tend to lack inspiration when it comes to filling in forms though; all my users would end up called Gavin A Montague, Gavin B Montague, etc and live at various fictional flat numbers in my block. I'm not keen on this simply because it makes it much harder to wrap ones head round the user conditions - was it Gavin D or Gavin Q who was meant to have an unfinished order?

On the command line I'm a big fan of the Faker Gem for generating specious data.

$ irb
require 'rubygems'
require 'faker'
Faker::Name.name => “Selena Jenkins”

On Github, I've posted some TextExpander snippets that bridge Faker and TextExpander.

Install the snippets and then, in any application, type:

• "fake:name" to insert a fake name
• "fake:pc" to insert a fake (but valid) UK postcode
• "fake:zip" to insert a fake (but valid) US zipcode
• "fake:tel" to insert a fake telephone number
• "fake:email" to insert a fake email address.

The scripts can be downloaded from Github.