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NAME

Data::Random::Structure - Generate random data structures

VERSION

version 0.01

SYNOPSIS

  use Test::More;
  use Data::Random::Structure;
  use JSON::PP;

  my $g = Data::Random::Structure->new(
        max_depth => 2,
        max_elements => 5,
  );

  my $ref = $g->generate();

  diag explain $ref; 

  my $json = JSON::PP->new;

  print $json->pretty->encode($ref);

  ok(1);

  done_testing();

OVERVIEW

This is a library to create random Perl data structures, mostly as a means to create input for benchmarking and testing various serialization libraries.

It uses grotty 'classic' Perl 5 OO mostly because I think having Moo as a dependency for a testing module is pretty gross. On the other hand, original flavor Perl OO is pretty gross.

ATTRIBUTES

max_depth

The maximum depth to embed data structures

max_elements

The maximum number of elements (array items or hash key/value pairs) per data structure.

METHODS

new

Constructor. May optionally pass:

  • max_depth

  • max_elements

If not set, these default to 3 and 6 respectively. Throws an exception if the argument list is not a multiple of 2.

generate

Recursively generate a data structure using hashes and arrays. The data structure will not contain more than max_depth nested data structures.

generate_scalar

Randomly generates one of the following scalar values:

  • float

  • integer (between 0 and 999_999)

  • string (see Data::Random rand_chars)

  • bool (value based 50/50 coin toss)

generate_array

Generate an arrayref and populate it with no more than max_element items. May be empty.

generate_hash

Generate a hashref and populate it with no more than max_element key/value pairs. May be empty.

AUTHOR

Mark Allen <mrallen1@yahoo.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2014 by Mark Allen.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.