Using the Faker Class

In version 2.0.4 and below, the Faker object is just a shortcut for the class method Factory.create, and that method creates a Generator object with access to the wide selection of provider methods. Because of how everything was set up, it was difficult to do certain things without going through the Factory and Generator internals and without potentially breaking a lot of things that will be difficult for users to fix when they upgrade.

The solution was to introduce a new Faker proxy class that will, for the most part, behave just like the old Faker shortcut but with support for multiple locales while providing the option to subclass and a very simple upgrade path should old code be affected. For the purposes of this document, the terms new Faker and old Faker will be used where the former refers to the new proxy class, and the latter refers to the Factory.create shortcut.

Breaking Change

Any codebase that uses the Faker.seed() method will be affected, because while both old and new Faker.seed() points to Generator.seed(), in new Faker, invocation of the method from a Faker object instance has been disabled, and attempting to do so will raise a TypeError as shown below.

TypeError: Calling `.seed()` on instances is deprecated. Use the class method `Faker.seed()` instead.

The rationale can be found in the relevant PR, but the goal is to deal with a non-explicit legacy behavior involving a shared random.Random instance that we believe can only become more confusing once new Faker is added.

Upgrade Guide

Suppose that the affected code looks something like this:

from faker import Faker
fake = Faker()
fake.seed(0)  # This will raise a TypeError

Just replace all seed() method calls from instances with Faker.seed() as shown below. This is all that is needed to start using the new Faker class and its features, even if additional arguments are passed to Faker, because the arguments expected by new Faker and old Faker are the same.

from faker import Faker
fake = Faker()
Faker.seed(0)

A conservative approach is to redefine Faker as the old shortcut shown below. This will skip using the new proxy class, but the code will still be able to use any new provider methods moving forward while being unaffected by new bugs. Of course, that also means there will be no multiple locale support and no option to subclass.

from faker.factory import Factory
Faker = Factory.create
fake = Faker()
fake.seed(0)

Proxy Class Implementation Details

A new Faker instance is just a proxy object that has references to Generator objects, one for each unique locale specified at instantiation. Those Generator objects are just “instances” of old Faker. If there is only one internal Generator object, the new Faker instance is running in single locale mode. If there is more than one, then it is running in multiple locale mode.

In single locale mode, a new Faker instance can easily be forced to behave like an instance created using old Faker, because a similar interface can be exposed on the new Faker instance, and then proxy calls to methods, properties, and attributes to the sole Generator object in a 1:1 fashion. In fact, that is how it is implemented and how backwards compatibility was preserved (save for Faker.seed).

In multiple locale mode, however, that 1:1 mapping is no longer present, and how calls are proxied depends on whether the attribute is a provider method or some attribute present in Generator objects. It is possible to provide sane default implementations that will map neatly like what we did for seed_instance, but the rest like add_provider and the random getter and setter are more dependent on specific use cases or are potentially dangerous.

In those cases, it is better for users to create their own subclass with their implementation or to directly call those methods from the internal Generator objects themselves. Multiple locale mode will be discussed in more detail in its dedicated section.

Proxy Class Attribute Name Resolution

The proxy class has a fairly involved attribute name resolution behavior that runs in this order:

  1. If the attribute name is seed, raise a TypeError. This prevents the class method seed from being called from an instance.

  2. If #1 does not apply, check if the attribute name matches an attribute present in the proxy class instance. If there is one, return the matching attribute.

  3. If #2 failed, check if the instance is in single locale mode. If yes, proxy the call to the sole internal Generator object, and attempt to return a matching attribute.

  4. If #3 does not apply, the instance is henceforth known to be in multiple locale mode. Proceed by checking if the attribute name matches a Generator attribute. If it does, raise a NotImplementedError.

  5. If #4 does not apply, check if the attribute name matches a cache pattern regex. If it does not, raise an AttributeError, since it should already have been handled by #2 if one does exist.

  6. If everything else has failed or does not apply, assume that the attribute name might be referring to a provider method and perform factory/generator selection, and proxy the call to the selected Generator object.

Factory/generator selection will be discussed in more detail under multiple locale mode’s dedicated section.

Locale Normalization

Depending on the locale value passed, a new Faker instance will either operate in single locale mode or multiple locale mode. The value of locale can be one of the following:

  1. Any empty value like None (automatically defaults to en_US)

  2. A valid locale string, underscored or hyphenated

  3. A list, tuple, or set with valid locale strings, underscored or hyphenated

  4. An OrderedDict with key-value pairs of valid locale strings (underscored or hyphenated) and weights

The first two are options already expected by old Faker, so it is pretty much the same for new Faker. Using any of those two options will always result in a new Faker instance that is in single locale mode. In that mode, there is really no need to retrieve a reference to the internal Generator object because of the 1:1 proxying behavior discussed earlier.

The potential pitfalls lie in multiple locale mode and when there is a need to access the internal Generator objects individually. Since locale strings can be written underscored (en_US) or hyphenated (en-US), this can lead to confusion and errors, so locale strings have to be normalized to provide consistent results without duplicates.

During instantiation, new Faker will normalize locale strings to the underscore format, and it will also store them as such. In other words, the locale string en_US will be treated the same as en-US, and when both are specified, the last to be processed will be treated as a duplicate and will be discarded. The same normalization is also performed when accessing the internal Generator object via key index.

For example, the code below will create a new Faker instance that is in single locale mode even if four locales were specified.

from faker import Faker
fake = Faker(['en-US', 'en_US', 'en_US', 'en-US'])

# Will return ['en_US']
fake.locales

# Get reference to en_US generator
us1 = fake['en_US']

# Get reference to en-US generator
us2 = fake['en-US']

# Will return True
us1 == us2

Multiple Locale Mode

To enable multiple locale mode, the value of locale argument must be a list, tuple, set, or OrderedDict with more than one valid locale, post-normalization. For example:

from collections import OrderedDict
from faker import Faker

locale_list = ['en-US', 'ja-JP', 'en_US']
fake1 = Faker(locale_list)

# Will return ['en_US', 'ja_JP']
fake1.locales

locale_odict = OrderedDict([
    ('en-US', 1),
    ('ja-JP', 2),
    ('en_US', 2),
])
fake2 = Faker(locale_odict)

# Will return ['en_US', 'ja_JP']
fake2.locales

In this mode, calling a prospective provider method from the new Faker instance will run factory/selection logic in this order:

  1. Check if a cached mapping already exists for the provider method. If yes, use that mapping, and skip to #3.

  2. If #1 does not apply, check which Generator objects support the provider method. Cache the results of the mapping, along with corresponding weights if they were provided during instantiation.

  3. If no generator supports the provider method, an AttributeError will be raised just as it would have been raised using old Faker.

  4. If there is only one generator that supports the provider method, return the only generator.

  5. If there is more than one applicable generator, and no weights were provided, randomly select a generator using a uniform distribution, i.e. random.choice.

  6. If there is more than one applicable generator, and weights were provided, randomly select a generator using a distribution defined by the provided weights.

Other than being able to customize probabilities based on locales and minimizing performance penalties, the factory selection logic guarantees that invoking a provider method will not fail, for as long as at least there is at least one internal Generator object supports it.

Examples

There are times when it is much easier to show than it is to explain in words, so here is a cheatsheet for new Faker in multiple locale mode.

from collections import OrderedDict
from faker import Faker
locales = OrderedDict([
    ('en-US', 1),
    ('en-PH', 2),
    ('ja_JP', 3),
])
fake = Faker(locales)

# Get the list of locales specified during instantiation
fake.locales

# Get the list of internal generators of this `Faker` instance
fake.factories

# Get the internal generator for 'en_US' locale
fake['en_US']

# Get the internal generator for 'en_PH' locale
fake['en_PH']

# Get the internal generator for 'ja_JP' locale
fake['ja_JP']

# Will raise a KeyError as 'en_GB' was not included
fake['en_GB']

# Set the seed value of the shared `random.Random` object
# across all internal generators that will ever be created
Faker.seed(0)

# Creates and seeds a unique `random.Random` object for
# each internal generator of this `Faker` instance
fake.seed_instance(0)

# Creates and seeds a unique `random.Random` object for
# the en_US internal generator of this `Faker` instance
fake.seed_locale('en_US', 0)

# Generate a name based on the provided weights
# en_US - 16.67% of the time (1 / (1 + 2 + 3))
# en_PH - 33.33% of the time (2 / (1 + 2 + 3))
# ja_JP - 50.00% of the time (3 / (1 + 2 + 3))
fake.name()

# Generate a name under the en_US locale
fake['en-US'].name()

# Generate a zipcode based on the provided weights
# Note: en_PH does not support the zipcode provider method
# en_US - 25% of the time (1 / (1 + 3))
# ja_JP - 75% of the time (3 / (1 + 3))
fake.zipcode()

# Generate a zipcode under the ja_JP locale
fake['ja_JP'].zipcode()

# Will raise an AttributeError
fake['en_PH'].zipcode()

# Generate a Luzon province name
# Note: only en_PH out of the three supports this provider method
fake.luzon_province()

# Generate a Luzon province name
fake['en_PH'].luzon_province()

# Will raise an AttributeError
fake['ja_JP'].luzon_province()

Unique Values

New in version v4.2.0 is the .unique attribute on the Faker proxy.

Accessing provider methods through this attribute guarantees that the returned values are unique for the lifetime of the Faker instance.

import faker

fake = faker.Faker()

numbers = set(fake.unique.random_int() for i in range(1000))
assert len(numbers) == 1000

To clear already seen values, simply call fake.unique.clear(), which will allow previous values generated to be returned again.

Different argument signatures for provider methods do not share a uniqueness pool.

import faker

fake = faker.Faker()

numbers = set(fake.unique.random_int(min=1, max=10) for i in range(10))
other_numbers = set(fake.unique.random_int(min=1, max=5) for i in range(5))

assert other_numbers.issubset(numbers)

If the range of possible values generated by a provider function is small and the .unique attribute has been used, it’s possible that no suitable unique value will be found after a certain number of iterations.

To avoid infinite loops, at that point, a UniquenessException will be raised.

import faker

fake = faker.Faker()

for i in range(3):
     fake.unique.boolean()  # UniquenessException!

As a final caveat, only hashable arguments and return values can be used with the .unique attribute, as it is backed internally by a set for fast membership testing.

import faker

fake = faker.Faker()

fake.unique.profile()  # TypeError: unhashable type: 'dict'