fake_name_generator - a light weight Ruby wrapper for the FakeNameGenerator.com API

This is a fairly simple Ruby wrapper for the FakeNameGenerator.com API. The API returns a full name, an address, fake credit card numbers, blood type(!), weight, and even a fake UPS number.

When I first thought of putting together this API wrapper for FakeNameGenerator.com, they had a free API unless you needed to bulk load generated names (> 10,000). Since then, they’ve handed over the API-handling duties to a third party named WebServius <www.webservius.com/corp/>.

Now, there is a limit of 50 free API calls upon signing up, and then after that API results cost $0.001 per additional 50 requests. It’s certainly not an outrageous cost, but, alas, it’s no longer a free API.

It’s also my first attempt at a Ruby wrapper for a web service API, so there are most likely inefficiencies and some bad code. I certainly appreciate any feedback anyone could provide. See the Contributing section below.

In order to use the FakeNameGenerator API, you will need to acquire an API key from FakeNameGenerator.com at <www.fakenamegenerator.com/api.php>. The API key actually comes from WebServius (as mentioned above), but the entrance is through the FakeNameGenerator website.

[sudo] gem install fake_name_generator

> fake_name = FakeNameGenerator.new(:api_key => 'VALID_KEY')
> puts fake_name.full_name
"Ignatius J. Reilly"
> puts fake_name.blood_type
"A-"

• This is my first attempt at a API-wrapping gem. There are certainly better ways to do this.

• Maybe detach the HTTP call from .new(), and move to its own method.

I would love some help and pointers on how to make this a better gem.

• Fork the project

• Please create a topic branch to make your changes

• Change, add, improve, upgrade, etc

• Please add tests for anything you’ve added, and adjust tests for things you’ve changed

• Make sure you rebase off of master one last time

• Send a pull request on GitHub

• Bill Turner <billturner@gmail.com>

• Jim Meyer <github.com/purp/>

MIT License. Copyright 2011 Bill Turner. Please see LICENSE.