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charlatan

ANALYTICS
Velocity0.0

Create fake data in R. Contribute to ropensci/charlatan development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com/ropensci/charlatan ↗

R's fake-data generator rebuilt its provider hierarchy so contributors can add one locale without touching the rest.

fake-datar-packageropenscilocalestestingr6
◆Current state
charlatan generates realistic fake data — names, addresses, phone numbers, jobs, internet artefacts — across many locales, following the same model as faker in Python and Perl. The 0.6.1 release reworked the provider class hierarchy so locale-specific providers inherit from a parent, and 0.6.2 since has been a documentation rebuild that happened to surface a duplicate Norwegian phone number pattern. Activity is sparse and bursty.
◆Where it's heading
The package's value scales with locale coverage, and its releases track that: early versions added data-type providers, middle versions added locales one contributor at a time, and 0.6.1 attacked the bottleneck by restructuring the class hierarchy so a locale can override a single function. Development has effectively been handed to contributors, with maintainer releases reduced to docs rebuilds and CRAN compliance.
◆Prediction
Expect the next substantive release to be an accumulation of contributed locales and providers arriving through the new parent-provider structure, rather than maintainer-driven feature work.

◆Recent moves

  1. 7mo ago

    Docs rebuild surfaces a duplicate Norwegian phone pattern

    No code changes — a documentation rebuild under a newer devtools, during which CRAN checks flagged a duplication in the Norwegian PhoneNumberProvider. The rest of the entry is CRAN and R-universe download links.

    View source ↗
  2. 1y ago

    Provider classes restructured so locales can override single functions

    ⚡ SPARK

    The provider hierarchy is rebuilt around a BareProvider and locale-specific providers inheriting from parent providers, replacing the naming-convention-driven loading that made adding an unusual locale expensive. For a package whose worth is locale breadth, this is the release aimed squarely at its growth constraint.

    View source ↗
  3. 6y ago

    New locales and providers; allowed_locales() added

    Phone number support arrives for Danish, New Zealand, Indonesian, Thai and Ghanaian locales, InternetProvider gains slug and MiscProvider gains boolean generators, and each R6 provider exposes allowed_locales() while hiding the underlying vector. A contributing vignette lands alongside — an early attempt at the problem 0.6.1 later solved structurally.

    View source ↗
  4. 7y ago

    Locale naming standardised; French and Danish data corrected

    Locale codes are standardised to the xx_XX form, Denmark moves from dk_DK to da_DK for ISO-3166 compliance, and contributed fixes clean up French accents, Danish phone formats and duplicate names. Correctness work on the data itself, which is what makes generated records plausible.

    View source ↗
  5. 8y ago

    charlatan v0.2.2

    Examples now run conditionally on the presence of suggested packages. A CRAN-check fix with no effect on generated data.

    View source ↗
  6. 8y ago

    Six new providers broaden charlatan beyond names and addresses

    Internet, UserAgent, File, Lorem, Misc and Elements providers arrive together, moving the package from a person-and-address generator toward general-purpose test data. stringi and iptools drop to Suggests, and missing locale data returns an empty string instead of erroring.

    View source ↗