So! Fancying a change from Form Tools for a while, I thought I’d return to generatedata and do a few updates.

In the very short term (few days) I’ll be working on 3.3.1, which will include random data sets for the remaining top 20 countries that visit the site. Four to go, I think.

Following that I’m going to revamp the front-end. The backend code, although not awfully efficient, isn’t all that bad – but the FE is extremely dated and far too large. I’ll be moving away from ye olde requirejs and onto React.

To be honest I’ve been looking around for new designs for the site but nothing’s really struck a chord. So for now I’m just going to begin re-implementing the functionality and see what comes of it.

Feature requests wanted! In a few months I’m going to look into an update to generatedata.com. Please see this post for more info.

https://github.com/benkeen/generatedata/issues/462

Hi! Just a heads up that I’ve made a small change to the generatedata.com donation process which will affect anyone who’s recently donated. If you’ve donated and find that the link in your email to finish setting up your account isn’t working, please email me at [email protected] and I’ll help out.

Sorry for the fuss!

Ben

Howdy all! I just update the main generatedata.com for the latest release. 3.2.8 was primarily a bug fix release – just minor stuff, but nice to patch!

Ben

Just a heads up that the main website has been updated to 3.2.7. I’ve also moved it over to use SSL (https://generatedata.com) – it was something I’ve meant to do for a while. Because the site has a login form, plus donation form, SSL just secures it a little better.

A temporary SSL cert is in place right now so it’ll whine at you when you try going to https://. Once it’s all sorted out, I’ll add an auto-redirect so that all requests go to the secure site.

Please let me know if anyone has any problems! ([email protected])

Hi all! generatedata 3.2.7 has just been released. It fixes a couple of minor issues and adds a new “Computed” Data Type. It’s a bit complex to explain, but the idea is that this new Data Type allows developers to get access to a lot more information about what’s being generated on each row – metadata of the actual generated field content – so they can use that information to output whatever they need in a new field.

The one example usage of this Data Type currently provided in the help documentation is for the Names data type. In case you need to know whether a name is male or female, you can use this Data Type to output something appropriate. But really, it can used for anything. Over time, we can add additional metadata to any Data Type to expose details of it’s inner workings: anything that may be of use to developers to customize the output of another field.

The main website is a couple of versions out of date now, so I’ll look into update it tomorrow. I hate to say it, but I’m going to have to add some ads to it (sigh). I really need to cover my costs for the hosting, etc. They won’t appear for people who’ve donated, at least.

The site has been all moved over and I patched up a few things (how long has the news failed to load? Yikes). Let me know if anyone has any problems, so far so good.

Just a heads up, I’ll be moving generatedata.com to a new hosting environment in the next couple of days. It’ll possibly be offline for a little while while it occurs. This is something of an experiment… depending on how it goes I may switch back in a month or so. We’ll see!

Alrighty! generatedata.com has been update to 3.2.4. This was a pretty big update – the site hadn’t been updated in over a year (!). It includes lots of database changes, features and more. Please send me an email if you find any bugs.

Breaking Changes

This is the first time an upgrade has deliberately introduced a breaking change. I hated to do it, but it had to be done. The old Credit Card Data Type has been dropped. Please use the PAN Data Type in the “Credit Card Data” group.

New Features

Please note, the free downloadable version of generatedata.com also has this feature and everything else discussed here. Not that I don’t love people donating (sure helps paying the hosting bills!) but just so you know. :)

• Data Set backups. For anyone with an account on the site, whenever you save a data set, it’ll automatically make a backup of it. It retains the last 200 edits you make to a data set. So, in case you accidentally mess something up, you can just browse the old saved versions to get it back.
• Configurable Plugins. Over time, the plugin list have grown, and some aren’t going to be as useful to some people as others. So now, when you log into the site you’ll see a new Settings tab. There, you can uncheck whatever Data Types, Export Types and Country-specific plugins you don’t want.
• New Plugins & more country data. Chile and Sweden have been added to the country list, and there are few more plugins, most country-specific.
• Bug fixes. Lots!

Anyway, enjoy. As mentioned, send me an email if you spot anything wonky.

Just a heads up, y’all. I’m taking generatedata.com offline tonight for upgrading. Sorry for the inconvenience.

It’s a bit of work because I’ll need to update the data to make it compatible with the latest code.