UUID generation

[vallode]

Currently in a project of mine I am subclassing the generator object:

class UUID(Generator):
    """Random UUID generator."""

    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(**kwargs)

    def generate(self):
        return uuid.uuid4()

Seeing as a standalone UUID generator isn't exactly necessary here, it would be nice to be able to pass methods to a generic generator like:

class MethodGenerator(Generator):
    def __init__(self, method, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(**kwargs)
        self.method = method

    def generate(self):
        return self.method()

This would be called like:

generator.MethodGenerator(uuid.uuid4)

[diddi-]

This is certainly an interesting idea that lends itself quite well with python being a dynamically typed language. However the potential downside I see is that MethodGenerator in this case could become a generator that does everything, the only limit would be the imagination of the person using it (for good and bad).

I personally don't mind a UUID generator that simply wraps uuid.uuid4() (or any of the other uuid versions) as the purpose and result of such a generator is intuitive and easily understood.

That being said, I'm definitely open for discussion here. Are there other usecases for this?

[vallode]

The reason I think MethodGenerator is a decent solution is because currently Faker relies on any attribute input to contain the generate method, this means that if you ever run into a situation that does not have a generator, you'll have to create one yourself. I think there needs to be a better solution for that, potentially just allowing faker to accept functions themselves.

I'll get around to making a merge request for a UUID generator, I think there are a lot of projects using UUIDs for their PKs.

Other usecases, off the top of my head:

• Date generator (Random, between two dates, offsets etc.)
• Boolean (Predictable return or random choice)

Anything else I can think of pretty nicely falls into the String generator, which can be used for a ton of things. Though it might be nice to have helper generators that do things like phone numbers etc.