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

``sh
$ npm install [-g] node-lipsum
`

Usage

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

$3

#### 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

`sh
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 The type of each text structure that will be returned. Choose from "paras" (paragraphs), "words", or "bytes" (default: "paras")
-a, --amount The number of text structures that will be returned. Defaults to 5. (default: "5")
-h, --help display help for command
`

#### Some Examples

`sh


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
`

$3

Inside your .js file:

`javascript
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

$3

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

$3

`sh
npm run build
`

$3

`sh
$ 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 .

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.