RandomYearString

The RandomYearString transformer is designed to populate specified database columns with random year strings. It is ideal for scenarios that require the representation of years without specific dates, such as manufacturing years of products, birth years of users, or any other context where only the year is relevant.

Parameters

Name	Description	Default	Required	Supported DB types
column	The name of the column to be affected		Yes	text, varchar, int2, int4, int8, numeric
keep_null	Indicates whether NULL values should be preserved	false	No	-

Description

The RandomYearString transformer leverages the faker library to generate strings representing random years. This allows for the easy generation of year data in a string format, adding versatility and realism to datasets that need to simulate or anonymize year-related information.

Example: Populate random year strings for the products table

This example shows how to use the RandomYearString transformer to fill the manufacturing_year column in the products table with random year strings, simulating the diversity of manufacturing dates.

RandomYearString transformer example

- schema: "public"
  name: "products"
  transformers:
    - name: "RandomYearString"
      params:
        column: "manufacturing_year"
        keep_null: false

In this configuration, the manufacturing_year column will be populated with random year strings, replacing any existing non-NULL values. If keep_null is set to true, then existing NULL values in the column will be preserved.