Test User Data (Fake Data)
DatabaseTestingTest DataDatabase Problem Overview
Where can I get, or how can I generate a large formatted collection of fake user data (names, email address, locations, etc.) that can be used for testing an application?
It can be clearly fake, this will be limited to the development server. But I'm sure anything would be better than what I could come up with.
Database Solutions
Solution 1 - Database
There are some tools built just for this. I've used http://www.generatedata.com/ before to generate data for MySql databases. RedGate has a nice tool to fill your SQL Server database with test data called SQL Data Generator. The RedGate tool costs about $300, but there is a free trial.
UPDATE: Faker.js is now available. It is a project built on node.js, and looks pretty comprehensive.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Mockaroo is great!
If you'd like an HTTP API of fake user data, check out Random User Generator
Solution 2 - Database
This is a open source tool for generating various types of test data. http://www.generatedata.com
Solution 3 - Database
http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ is a good resource for creating test data with realistic looking users complete with SSN, email address, ... They have a bulk download option too.
Solution 4 - Database
Check out this list of "Funny Names" some of them are classic
Solution 5 - Database
Another open source test generator tool is my own http://code.google.com/p/csvtest.
Solution 6 - Database
For anyone looking for an updated solution to this problem... I wrote a test data generator project for Data Synchronisation Studio. It can generate a large dataset ranging from 1 to 100s of millions of rows of realistic testing data (lots of OFs there :D) Anyway, here is a blog post all about it. http://www.simego.com/Blog/2012/02/Test-Data-Generator-Download-for-Data-Sync