Relational generation of random data

[kedicesur]

To save lazy people like me from writing a class for this job; in a users document once chance.name() is used to generate "Albert Hodges" then the next call to chance.gender() should have the option to follow a previously used gender related method. Such as we sould be able to invoke chance.gender({follow: "name"}) and then chance.prefix({follow: "gender"}) kind of.

[somejeff]

I'm having trouble understanding the approach. Could you provide a "current" and "propose" snippet of code?

for example:

// currently I have to do this
const name = chance.name()
const gender = chance.gender()
...
// to get this:
...

// I wish I could just do this:
const name = chance.name()
const gender = chance.gender({follow:'name'})
const prefix= chance.prefix({follow:'gender'})

// to get...   ???

[3aluw]

He meant that if the generated name is female the chance.gender() will give him a female; then the chance.prefix () will follow the gender and generate a female prefix.

However, I don't think the library should have such implementation. Why ? Because We will need to change the return value of the functions. ie: const name = chance.name() will return a string, But he wants it to return the options object (or part of it) to be used in gender and so on. Please correct me if I;m wrong @kedicesur .

[somejeff]

So if this is the case, then one approach is to develop some sort of contextual mixin. The challenge is the context is, well, contextual. Is a customer based on gender? location? age?

A contexual mixin function could have this context.

For example:

chance.mixin({
  'user': function() {
    return chance.genderContext({   // creates the user based on a random gender
      first: chance.first(),
      last: chance.last(),
      gender: chance.gender()
    });
  },
  'fullAddress': function() {
    return chance.countryContext({  // creates an address based on a random country 
      address: chance.address(),
      province: chance.province(),
      country: chance.country(),
      postal_code: chance.postcode()
    })
  }
});

I agree tho that this format would be way too opinionated for a core functionality. I suggest waiting for Chance to mature to support a plugin model.