documentation

For a short abstract of what benerator does, have a look at the benerator home page , for more detailed informations, check the feature list .

There is a presentation that takes you to a tour through benerator in 30 minutes.

The next level of questions should be answered by the FAQ .

Now you should be keen on seeing how benerator works: the getting started document will introduce you to syntax, usage and API of benerator.

Now, that you have reached this point, it is time to download the current benerator distribution. Looking at the examples provided in the demo directory will give you a detailed view on how to use benerator. If you are primarily populating databases, cross-check it with the file format documentation. For XML file generation, check the XML documentation.

Now you can start rolling your own test data. For the first specific data providers you might use some from the domain packages . You can define own nested datasets for structuring import data.

You will soon face some data constraints that are too special to be handled generically, like e.g. creating data that fits with special checksum algorithms or strange multi-field constraints. There are many places at which you can plug in own Java code as described in the customizing guide .

Documentation will always be a step behind implementation. If the documentation did not explain well enough, ask me in the help forum .

Possibly the data format you have to create is too strange to cope with the standard benerator behavior (yes, I've seen some really sick data file formats out there). In such cases you can still fall back to the benerator api and plumb things together as they fit your needs best. Check the api guide and api reference for this task.

If you are missing features, tell me by the feature requests forum . If you find a bug, please post it in the problems & bugs forum .

benerator is still evolving. Before release 1.0, all interfaces and formats might change in non-trivial ways. The steps necessary for upgrading are described in the migration guide . I will try to keep changes small for the majority of users, but the deeper you dive into the benerator implementation, the more work you might have in migration. If you are heavily implementing customizations, please get in contact with me - if I know what you are doing, I can try to save upgrade work for you.

If benerator was of use for you, you are welcome to describe your experiences in a field report .