Create A Bunch Of Random Files for Testing Whatever Using Powershell

I need to test processing of files by a process that ingests text files into an Oracle Database.  For this I do not care what the data looks like once ingested. I care more about testing the ingestion process which is based on a JAVA application.  To give the ingestion process a good workout I generate a ton of files, the more the better. To do this I kludged together a powershell script that does the job.  The script generates as many text files as I want using any text source I want.  Then the script inserts a random date into each file so that they appear as new files to Oracle.  I could use powershell to randomly add anything but I choose dates since there is a date field in the Oracle database.  

I found the powershell snippet that generates random dates online a while back and not sure who gets credit, but it is not me.  A quick search this morning and I saw several hits in Google for the code.

Basically the script creates a new file appends a random date then cats a source text file and appends that to the new file.  Even though each file has the same information they are random because of the random date.

#declare some variables

$SourceText=”c:\path\to\mytext.txt”  (edit as needed)

$DestLoc=”c:\path\to\where\files\go  (edit as needed)

$myTxt= cat $SourceTxt    (I used this because I did not find a simple way to cat the source file right in the code when I need the text.  The code is “Add-content $DestLoc\$y.txt $myTxt”  I tried using backticks like used in bash to put the output of one command into another command like so: “Add-content $DestLoc\$y.txt `cat $SourceText`” but powershell does not like that.

#set how many files are needed

$Xfiles=10000 (edit as needed)

#set up a loop

for ($i=1; $i -lt $Xfiles; $i++)

{

$y = $i; (on each iteration set $y = current value of $i)

new-item $DestLoc\$y.txt -type file -force (create the new empty file using $y as the file name)

#Generate a random date

[[DateTime]$theMin = "1/1/2008" (start date edit as needed)

[DateTime]$theMax = [DateTime]::Now (end date, for this it is current, edit as needed)

$theRandomGen = new-object random

$theRandomTicks = [Convert]::ToInt64( ($theMax.ticks * 1.0 - $theMin.Ticks * 1.0 ) * $theRandomGen.NextDouble() + $theMin.Ticks * 1.0 )

$dateNow=(new-object DateTime($theRandomTicks))

#Append random date to new file

Add-content $DestLoc\$y.txt $dateNow

#Append target text to new file

Add-content $DestLoc\$y.txt $myTxt

}

Uncluttered Script_________________________________________________________

#declare some variables

$SourceText=”c:\path\to\mytext.txt”  

$DestLoc=”c:\path\to\where\files\go  

$myTxt= cat $SourceTxt  

#set how many files are needed

$Xfiles=10000

#set up a loop

for ($i=1; $i -lt $Xfiles; $i++)

{

$y = $i;

new-item $DestLoc\$y.txt -type file -force

#Generate a random date

[[DateTime]$theMin = "1/1/2008"

[DateTime]$theMax = [DateTime]::Now

$theRandomGen = new-object random

$theRandomTicks = [Convert]::ToInt64( ($theMax.ticks * 1.0 - $theMin.Ticks * 1.0 ) * $theRandomGen.NextDouble() + $theMin.Ticks * 1.0 )

$dateNow=(new-object DateTime($theRandomTicks))

#Append random date to new file

Add-content $DestLoc\$y.txt $dateNow

#Append target text to new file

Add-content $DestLoc\$y.txt $myTxt

}