Question

Does anyone know of an app that would generate an xml file filled out with random data?

My app has an importer that should handle almost all sizes and structure of xml files, and I’d like to test this.

To be clear; not only do all element names and values need to be random, but also the tree structure itself. There should be random numbers of child branches, each with further random branches and so on.

Similarly, is there an application that would create the same sort of random data for Json files?

Answer 1

Step 1. Define a template for the repeating elements in the XML.

t= string.Template( """<sometag><data>${data}</data><moredata>${moredata}</moredata></sometag>""" )

Step 2. Generate random values.

import random
args = dict(
    data = random.random(),
    moredata= random.random()
)

Step 3. Insert random values into the template.

t.substitute( **args )

You can, without much work, easily generate lots of random XML. Want names instead of numbers?

def random_name( size=8 ):
    return "".join( random.choice(string.ascii_letters) for x in range(size) )

Want variable-length names?

def random_variable_len_name( mean_size= 8, std_size= 2 ):
    size= int(random.gauss( mean_size, std_size ))
    return random_name( size )

The possibilities are endless, and really simple to implement.

---

Random JSON is even easier.

import json
import random
args = dict(
    data = random.random(),
    moredata= random.random()
)
json.dumps( [args] )        

---

If “random” confuses you, consider this.

t1 = string.Template( """<sometag>${body}</sometag>""" )
t2 = string.Template( """<othertag attr="$attr">$data</othertag>""" )
t3 = string.Template( """<moretag attr="$attr">$data</moretag>""" )
elements = random.randint(0,4)
body= [ random.choice([t2,t3]).substitute( attr=random.random(), data= random_name() ) for x in range(elements) ]
t1.substitute( body="".join( body ) )

That, for example, will create random tags within another tag.