Jejune

Jejune is a tool that generates stereotypical usernames that can be used for prototypes or boilerplate. Or just for fun.

It works using Markov chains to construct usernames from random words that (usually) make sense in an order (e.g., our is used before lord, so it will try and generate ourlord). It also comes with additional sugar to make the usernames more realistic, such as mispelling words, wings (xXx<name>xXx) and numbers before and after the username (biased towards birth dates).

Installation

npm install -g jejune

Usage

The jejune executable is pretty straight-forward:

$ jejune --help

  Usage: jejune [options] [generators..]

  Options:

    -h, --help     output usage information
    -V, --version  output the version number

  Examples:

    $ jejune christian
    $ jejune

$ for i in {1..5}; do bin/jejune christian; done
Lover_Of_our_Father94
ThroughchurchLover981
FotherOfhumanity132
xOxSinnedxOx
Heaven881

Configuration

Jejune supports configuring general settings in a JSON file. It will be loaded from /etc/jejune/conf.json or ~/.jejune/conf.json (%USERPROFILE\jejune\conf.json on Windows).

An example configuration file with default settings:

{
    "numbers": true,
    "wings": true,
    "literacy": 0.65
}

This enables numbers after and before the username (usually birth dates), wings (prefixes and suffixes) and the literacy level is 0.65, so 65% of the userbase will not misspell words.

Jejune has a modular generator system that is configured by JSON, allowing you to declare your own method of generating usernames, usually related to a certain [sub-]culture.

The default generators are stored in the generators directory in Jejune's source directory. System-wide ones are stored in /etc/jejune/generators (none on Windows) and user-wide ones are in ~/.jejune/generators (%USERPROFILE%\jejune\generators on Windows).

The simplest of generators petlover which could be placed in /etc/jejune/generators/petlover.json:

{
    "parts": {
        "cats": ["rule"],
        "dogs": ["rule"]
        "rule": []
    },
    "wings": [
        ["xX", "Xx"]
    ],
    "numbers": {
        "births": [1980, 2005],
        "ranges": [[0, 125]],
        "voodoo": [1, 3, 10]
    }
}

The parts section is where the magic is -- a random starting word is chosen from all the words defined here. Each word has its own array of words that can logically come after it, e.g. the example shows that the word rule can come after both cats and dogs. This would generate catsrule or dogsrule. The wings section defines the prefix and suffix pairs that may be selected. The numbers section will usually generate a number in the range of the births values, so it would generate a year between 1980 and 2005 and then get the last 2 characters in the year, e.g. 1994 would be 94. There's also a chance that numbers will be randomly chosen from the ranges value though. If the resulting number is inside of the voodoo array, a new number will be generated.

Take a look at christian.json in the generators directory for a more solid example of a generator.

API

..

jejune([generators..])

If generators is not provided, generate a username using a random generator in any of the configuration directories. If generators is an array, generate an array of usernames using the generators in the array in their exact order. Otherwise, assume generators is the name of a generator and generate a username using that.

Example

var jejune = require("jejune");
var christian = jejune("christian"); // generates just a christian username
var some = jejune(["christian", "teenager", "gamer", "mlp"]); // generates an array of usernames in that order

console.log(jejune()); // username from random generator

N.B. Not all generators listed in the example are implemented yet.