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marak
faker.js
HISTORICAL RECORD2010–2022
marak / faker.js · Not publicly available

faker.js

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Web Development
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39Distinct people
44Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

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What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 12:45:45 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year44 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2010-05-16 08:16:40 UTC to 2022-01-17 01:53:56 UTC.

0369122010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments20102011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 2 submissions, 0 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 4 submissions, 3 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 1 submissions, 10 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 5 submissions, 7 comments2022

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20102010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC220
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC743
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11110
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1257

What Hacker News says

11 sources
eviltester·Oct 19, 2021
I wanted to improve my JavaScript programming, and learn AG Grid at the same time so I tried to think of an application which had a data grid front and center, but met needs that I had. So I built a Markdown table code generator. I've always hated building tables for Markdown so this was helpful in intial prototype stage. I added CSV because AG Grid has an exportDataAsCSV function so it was a 'no cost' feature. The parsing code for importing the various formats is pretty minimal so there will be many edge cases that don't work. Because everything is based around the same data structures internally adding new import and export formats was fairly simple. I haven't added any tests yet because I was incrementally building it and learning to structure JavaScript at the same time. It is pure JavaScript with no frameworks, simply because I'm con
Read the rest
centrating on learning JavaScript at the moment and there is no build system. Looking at the code now, after a 4 month gap I can see that I didn't even know about JavaScript modules and imports at the time I started so the code is just added directly into the main index through a script element include. It isn't the most robust application but it was an interesting starting point. My end goal with it was to add data generation capabilities, and have it all run in the browser, but I haven't got to that point yet. My plan is to try to do this by adding a 'type' to each column and then using Faker to generate the data https://github.com/marak/Faker.js/ Thought it might be useful if anyone is learning JavaScript and wants to see a simple application. Code is here: https://github.com/eviltester/grid-table-editor The readme file in the source has links to other similar apps which have been around for much longer if anyone needs an inbrowser table editor.
In Show HN: A grid based editor for Markdown tables, CSV, Gherkin tables, HTML
bmn__·May 23, 2021
Hey Marak, have you compensated the original author of faker yet or are you too busy being much of a drama queen (ref GH bug #1046)? How about that relicencing removing the copyleft and attribution terms? Copyright 2004-2005 Jason Kohles, GPL-1/Artistic --- https://metacpan.org/source/JASONK/Data-Faker-0.07/lib/Data/... Copyright 2010 Marak Squires, MIT --- https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/blob/a9f98046c7d5eeaabe12f... Looks too me like you are really butt-hurt about other people ripping you off, but have no problem doing the same yourself. /cc ddevault
In Monetizing open-source is problematic
JimDabell·May 23, 2021
> CDN is hardcoded into the JS library. Why would you even do that and then shame people? It’s worth noting that before the fakercloud.com URLs were hard-coded into the library, the library was hard-coding a different service’s S3 URLs (uifaces.co) and only stopped when they became inaccessible: https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/commit/e45648439ff5dd9adbe... https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/issues/1055 So it seems a little unfair to complain that Retool are embedding URLs to your CDN when this library was doing the same thing to UI Faces a few months ago.
In Monetizing open-source is problematic
patcon·May 23, 2021
Someone in Marak's recent thread said it: > We need some sort of open source software developer's union https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/issues/1046#issuecomment-7... Maybe "union" isn't the right word, but I feel it could be a powerful force if a group created a github app for solidarity amongst maintainers, that hundreds of FOSS maintainers could authorize to submit license-related PRs against their projects. It could collectivize and streamline the effort of swapping or amending licenses, and seeking permission from contributors for such changes. How impactful might it be if the "union" could exercise the threat of a banhammer of sorts, so that (at least in theory) in one fell swoop, it could initiate a license clause that targeted very specific conditions (e.g., "Fortune 500 companies no longer get free license"), or maybe even singl
Read the rest
ing out very specific companies in particularly egregious situations. I wonder if the threat of solidarity amongst FOSS maintainers and consequences would lead to companies starting to play it safe and simply start being better stewards Even just the threat of the infrastructure for such a thing existing might have an effect, even if it's very rarely engaged.
In Monetizing open-source is problematic
throwaway_25434·May 23, 2021
I am surprised at the outrage and the choice of adjectives in this thread. Retool is using faker.js in their app, which is MIT. It also looks like the URLs to fakercloud.com CDN are hardcoded in the library [1] so I doubt this was intentional from the Retool dev. They even have a shout out for faker.js in the “How we built this” box [2] [1]: https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/blob/c9764abd20a198e318367... [2]: https://retool.com/api-generator/
In Monetizing open-source is problematic
dvdhsu·May 23, 2021
Hi all! I'm David, CEO @ Retool. I'm looking in to this right now and will update my comment here with a response in the next two hours. Edit: just did a bit of digging. It looks like we have a Retool template that has some fake data in it (https://retool.com/api-generator/). This is an app built in Retool, and has a few thousand rows of hard-coded data. Most of this fake data is self-generated, but we used the faker.js library (https://github.com/marak/Faker.js/) to generate three datatypes: IP address, avatar, and industry. This MIT licensed library, when used, creates data that links directly to fakercloud (https://cdn.fakercloud.com/avatars/). Here is the code itself: https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/blob/master/lib/internet.j..., and here is a demo that shows the library generating those links: https://rawgit.com/Marak/faker.js/mast
Read the rest
er/examples/browser/in.... I just spoke to the engineers who worked on this project, and we are sorry for including links to fakercloud. This wasn’t intentional, and we just pushed a commit removing all avatars from the template. This is already deployed. I hope you all can understand why we trusted the data generated by the MIT licensed project, and didn’t think it would link to anything proprietary. I myself am an engineer (and avid HN reader, as evinced by how I found this while reading HN on a Sat night), understand Marak’s frustration, and agree that monetizing OSS is hard. While we’ve already contributed around $10k to various libraries we use (https://opencollective.com/retool), including faker.js, Babel, ESLint, and JSON Schema, I’m going to see if there is more we can do. We’ll be writing a blog post about it this week and I will follow up with more next steps. I wonder whether there is a better way of sponsoring OSS, other than just donating dollars every month? (Maybe we could commit one engineering-day per month for contributing back to OSS libraries we use heavily?) In the meantime, we'll certainly continue sponsoring all the libraries we’re sponsoring already, including faker.js. (Also: I’m sorry to Marak for not responding to his email re. acquiring Faker. More in this child thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27252420)
In Monetizing open-source is problematic

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