chapinb/fakefiles

Generate fake file and folder structures

FakeFiles

Generate fake content to populate a file system and take up disk space.

Warning

This is a pre-release version. Use at your own risk.

Usage

First, create or select a configuration file with the desired plan to generate. You may run multiple configuration files across the same target folder, so long as there are no conflicting patterns or paths. See documentation on configuration files for additional details on building a configuration file.

You can install the script by following the below steps:

1. Ensure you have Python 3.6 or later installed
2. Download the code from this respository
3. From within the respository run pip install -r requirements.txt to install the needed libraries.
4. Then run python fakefiles.py --help and you should see a help message if the tool is ready for use, or an error if additional steps are required.

FakeFiles Help Text

$ python fakefiles.py --help
usage: fakefiles.py [-h] [-n] target config

positional arguments:
  target         Path to write the generated files and folders.
  config         Configuration file to run

optional arguments:
  -h, --help     show this help message and exit
  -n, --dry-run  Dry run, do everything but make files and folders.

Example Invocation

Generate files using the "configs/finance/finance.yml" configuration within the fileshare directory:

python fakefiles.py fileshare configs/finance/finance.yaml

TODO

• Config for sales department with contracts

Configuration files

The real logic lies within the configuration files, which permit the specification of folder structure and filename patterns for the script to generate. Additionally, it allows for the specification of template files so that you can control the file content that is placed in the destination.

Variables are available within the configuration files to permit the dynamic generation of file names and folder paths. You may not specify more than one variable

The full list of supported variables are defined below and are case sensitive:

YEAR:	A year value, between and including the min_year and max_year specified within the _meta key of the configuration file.
MONTH:	A month value between 1 and 12.
INCREMENT_NUMBER:	An incrementing number for each time the file is created. The possible range of incrementing numbers is specified within the how_many_range key, and requires 2 values in the array for the minimum and maximum number of files to generate.
RAND_NUM:	A pseudo-random 1 digit zero padded number. You can control the range with min_int and max_int.

Feature Requests

If you are looking to contribute, consider adding support for one or more of these desired features:

• Expand out the supported patterns to support additional attributes, such as timestamps, random words, random names, random codenames.
• Allow multiple patterns in a single file or folder name
• Develop functionality to allow for timestomping the files after copy. Possibly by incorporating https://github.com/Delgan/win32-setctime

Future patterns to develop

RAND_WORDS:	Multiple pseudo-random word with alpha characters only. The minimum and maximum character count must be specified with the word_size key and the num_words must specify the number of words. Further you may use the delimiter to set the delimiter between words.
YEARMONTH:	The current year and month in the format YYYY-mm
MONTH_LONG:	The full english month name. Ie. January, February, etc.
MONTH_SHORT:	The shortened english month name. Ie. JAN, FEB, etc.
DAY:	A day value between 1 and 28.
YMD:	Generates a valid random year-month-day between and including the entirity of min_year and max_year
TIMESTAMP:	Generates a valid timestamp string with the format YYYY-mm-dd_hh-mm-ss to comply with filename allowed characters.