The fastest way to prototype API with most real dummy data, and provide them to other team members.

Instead of creating many new controllers and actions, and sending random data like "First name #{rand(100)}" you'll get real data for developing/testing.

Gem has a syntax similar to rails routes, factory bot, and uses faker to generate dummy data.

Features:

• fast API prototyping
• clear and familiar syntax
• Faker for test data generation
  • including links to images if needed
• manage cookies, session, headers with fake response
• executes your factories in real-time, so you always get fresh and random data
• has generator
• has standalone mode (see documentation for more details)

Installation process is very simple.

• add gem 'fake_api' to the Gemfile
• run bundle install
• mount gem in routes.rb mount FakeApi::Engine => '/api'
• rails g fake_api Product. It will generate factory and routing files.
• edit app/fake_api/*.rb, define your routing and factories.
• open localhost:300/api/projects.json (see step 5) or localhost:300/api/projects.xml (to return XML in API response)
• profit :)

You can keep your routing and factories in many files.

Sample of the factory:

# app/fake_api/factory.rb
class Factory < FakeApi::Factoring

  # Example of User object
  # you can see that it will generate link to fake image
  factory(:user) do
    {
      id: rand(100),
      first_name: Faker::Name.first_name,
      last_name: Faker::Name.first_name,
      avatar_url: Faker::Avatar.image(size: '128x128'),
      age: rand(100)
    }
  end

  # heare you can put "relations" to other factories
  # see "author" node
  factory(:project) do
    {
      id: rand(1_000),
      title: Faker::Company.name,
      description: Faker::Company.catch_phrase,
      type: Faker::Company.type,
      author: object(:user)
    }
  end

  # or have factory which contains from the list of Projects and a single user
  factory(:complex) do
    {
      projects: create_list(:project, 2),
      user: object(:user)
    }
  end

end

And sample of routing:

# app/fake_api/app_routing.rb
class AppRouting < FakeApi::Routing
  get('/projects').and_return           { create_list(:project, 5) }.with_status(202).with_headers({TOKEN: "SECRET"})
  get(%r{/projects/\d+$}).and_return    { object(:project) }
  post('/projects').and_return          { object(:project).merge({created: 'ok'}) }
  delete(%r{/projects/\d+$}).and_return { { result: :deleted } }.with_status(333)

  post('/auth')
    .and_return { { status: "OK" } }
    .with_cookies({x: "A"})
    .with_session({y: "B"})
    .with_headers({token: "C"})
end

• create_list(:factory_name, 10) to create an array of 10 factories.
• object(:factory_nane) to return a factory

• get/post/put/patch/delete to define route
• and_return to specify the response. This response will be converted to FORMAT (json, xml, js, csv(for arrays) etc)
• with_cookies to list returned cookies
• with_session to list changes in session
• with_headers to list returned headers

Developing standalone version of the gem:

cd test
rackup -p 3000 -o 0.0.0.0

Edit config.ru to change example code.

This is an example how you can start just fake_api server and define your factories and responses just inside one single file.

Please check example below and instructions how to start fakea_api in standalone mode.

Since this is a rack app it could be just deployed to the server.

# start it:
# rackup -p 3000 -o 0.0.0.0

# create file
# config.ru

require 'rubygems'
require 'fake_api/standalone'

factory(:user) do
  {
    id: rand(100),
    first_name: Faker::Name.first_name,
    last_name: Faker::Name.last_name,
    age: rand(100)
  }
end

get('/users').and_return do
  create_list(:user, 5)
end

get(%r{/users/\d+$}).and_return do
  object(:user)
end

run FakeApi::Standalone.app on: '/api'

Theare is only one thing which is not convinient is a need to restart server after code changes.

• render ERB?
• exclude from code converage generator and dummy app
• make code coverage 100%
• access controller in the gem?
• reload code in standalone app after code changes in dev mode

You are welcome to contribute.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.