node-lipsum: lipsum.com Service/CLI for NodeJS

Summary

node-lipsum is a NodeJS Module and Command-line Interface combo that provides a service API for lipsum.com.

Node-lipsum can be used right from the command line by invoking node-lipsum (assuming you've installed it globally) or as a node module. When used as a node module, you can also get access to it's service and parser sub-modules, which can provide fine-grain access to lipsum.com's service.

Lorem Ipsum taken from http://www.lipsum.com courtesy of James Wilson.

Use Cases

You can use node-lipsum when you need:

• Dummy Text for website mocks

• Fixtures for unit/functional tests

• Arbitary text that's meaningless

• A lame excuse to practice ancient Latin

Installation

$ npm install [-g] node-lipsum

Usage

There are 2 different ways to use node-lipsum: via the command line, and as a node module.

The Command-Line Interface

Basic Dummy Text Retrieval

As node-lipsum was built with a specific use case in mind, it is available out of the box via the node-lipsum script. Provided you have installed node-lipsum globally, simply run

$ node-lipsum

This will return you 5 paragraphs of Latin dummy text.

CLI Options

Usage: node-lipsum [options]

The CLI for the NodeJS Lorem Ipsum Service

Options:
  -V, --version            output the version number
  -s, --start-with-lipsum  Whether or not the text should start with "Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet...". (default: false)
  -w, --what <type>        The type of each text structure that will be returned. Choose from "paras" (paragraphs), "words", or "bytes" (default: "paras")
  -a, --amount <number>    The number of text structures that will be returned. Defaults to 5. (default: "5")
  -h, --help               display help for command

Some Examples

# get 1 paragraph of text
$ node-lipsum -a 1

# get 25 words of text, starting with "lorem ipsum"
$ node-lipsum -s -w words -a 25

# the above can alternatively be written like so
$ node-lipsum --start-with-lipsum --what words --amount 25

# print a nice help message
$ node-lipsum -h  # or --help

The NodeJS Module

Inside your .js file:

import Lipsum from "node-lipsum";
import fs from "node:fs/promises";

const lipsum = new Lipsum();
const lipsumOpts = {
  start: "yes",
  what: "bytes",
  amount: 80,
};
const text = await lipsum.getText(lipsumOpts);
try {
  await fs.writeFile("lipsum.txt", text, "utf-8");
  console.log(`Wrote ${text.length} characters!`);
} catch (err) {
  console.error(err);
}

node-lipsum also ships with type declarations + source maps included for TypeScript support.

Full Dox

Can be found within the source code.

Development

Installation

$ git clone https://github.com/traviskaufman/node-lipsum.git
$ cd node-lipsum/
$ npm install

Compiling

npm run build

Testing

$ npm test

Issues

Please report them here!

License: LGPL

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

History

I originally wrote this in 2012, in CoffeeScript, for NodeJS 0.8 :smiley: In 2025 I modernized it so it should work on all modern versions of NodeJS. Thanks to all who have used this module throughout the years and contributed feedback.