[Django]-How to use Faker from Factory_boy

You can use faker with factory_boy like this:

class RandomUserFactory(factory.Factory):
    class Meta:
        model = models.User

    first_name = factory.Faker('first_name')

user = RandomUserFactory()

print user.first_name
# 'Emily'

So you need to instantiate a user with factory_boy and it will call Faker for you.

I don’t know if you are trying to use this with Django or not,
but if you want the factory to save the created user to the database,
then you need to extend factory.django.DjangoModelFactory instead of factory.Factory.

factory_boy doesn’t provide a public/documented interface to get to the Faker instances it uses. So preferably create yourself a separate one. But in case you really need to:

import factory
print(factory.Faker._get_faker().random_int())
print(factory.Faker._get_faker('en_US').random_int())

You can also use generate()/evaluate(), but the interface changed with time:

# 3.0.1
# uses self.locale
print(factory.Faker('random_int').generate())
print(factory.Faker('random_int').evaluate(None, None, None))
print(factory.Faker('random_int', locale='en_US').generate())
print(factory.Faker('random_int', locale='en_US').evaluate(None, None, None))

# 3.1.0
# uses locale from the parameters
print(factory.Faker('random_int').generate({'locale': None}))
print(factory.Faker('random_int').evaluate(None, None, {'locale': None}))
print(factory.Faker('random_int').generate({'locale': 'en_US'}))
print(factory.Faker('random_int').evaluate(None, None, {'locale': 'en_US'}))

# 3.2.0, 3.2.1
# no generate()
print(factory.Faker('random_int').evaluate(None, None, {'locale': None}))
print(factory.Faker('random_int').evaluate(None, None, {'locale': 'en_US'}))

You may also check out the other answer for a more detailed example.

First, if you want to use factory_boy with a Django model, you should use DjangoModelFactory as it is recommended.

Second, factory_boy also suggests to use Faker attribute declaration in order to easily define realistic-looking factories. (see providers)

class RandomUserFactory(factory.DjangoModelFactory):
    class Meta:
        model = 'myapp.User'  # Equivalent to model = myapp.models.User

    first_name = factory.Faker('first_name')

Once you have defined your factory, you can simply use it as follows:

>>> o = RandomUserFactory()
>>> o.first_name
Tim

As the other answers have already clarified, the proper/usual way to use Faker is with factories. However, it is occasionally useful to be able to use Faker inline, and that seems to be the underlying question here.

Here is an updated answer for 2022 and latest factoryboy versions:

from typing import Any

from factory import Faker


def get_fake(provider: str, locale: str | None = None) -> Any:
     """ e.g. `get_fake('name')` ==> 'Buzz Aldrin' """
    if not locale:
        locale = Faker._DEFAULT_LOCALE  # pylint: disable=protected-access
    return Faker(provider).evaluate({}, None, {'locale': locale})