dtao / randy

Generate random stuff

Randy

A little library for easily producing random data using Ruby's built-in rand function.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'randy'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install randy

Usage

Currently randy can produce two kinds of random data (in theory this will change).

Strings

The original main purpose of this library is to produce random strings easily.

For example, to produce a random 10-character string:

# Example output: BASWCEV3TQ
Randy.string(10)

By default, the result string will comprise characters from the digits 0-9 and the English alphabet.

This can be changed by specifying the characters to be used:

# Example output: baaabbabac
Randy.string(10, "abc")

Numbers

It's already easy to produce random numbers using Ruby. However, randy makes it even easier.

To produce a random integer, just specify a range:

# Will include some number between 1 and 10
Randy.integer(1..10)

The result will be consistent with how Ruby ranges work; that is, an inclusive range (..) will potentially include the upper bound while an exclusive range (...) will not.

Admittedly, the above is quite trivial to implement by hand, e.g., with 1 + rand(10). Think of it simply as a nicer interface to rand.

The same functionality is also exposed to decimal values:

Randy.decimal((1.4)..(6.2))