textual-healing

Textual Healing

Textual Healing is a text generator for Javascript. It generates texts with simple replacements and filters. It is seedable, so that the generated result is predictable given a specific combination of filters, seed & data.

Under the hood, Textual Healing uses Prando.

How to use text generation (TextualHealing)

Install the package if you haven't already:

npm i --save textual-healing

First, you're going to need some data:

const data = {
  "bread": [ // This is a group of bread-like foods
    "sandwich",
    "pizza",
    "cake",
    "burrito"
  ],
  "kind": [ // This is a group of kinds of aforementioned foods
    "pepperoni",
    "veggie",
    "fish",
    "cheese",
    "chocolate",
    "disappointment"
  ],
  "start": [ // This is what a basic pattern looks like
    "{kind} {bread}"
  ]
}

Now given this data, create a new instance of TextualHealing:

const { TextualHealing } = require("textual-healing");

const t = new TextualHealing(data);

Enjoy:

t.start(); // 'fish pizza'
t.start(); // 'pepperoni sandwich'
t.start(); // 'disappointment cake'
…

Advanced usage

Groups can be combined. For example the pattern {bread|kind} will return an item from either the group bread or kind. This works by concating the groups and then choosing an item at random (so it's not a 50:50 split necessarily).

There are also filters which can be used. By default there are a few filters useful in the English language. For example the pattern {bread:pl} will return "pizzas", "cakes", "sandwiches" or "burritos".

Another fun thing to try is to have recursive patterns. For example, if the pattern bread contained {bread} {bread}, expect to find yourself some "pizza cake", "sandwich burrito" or even "pizza cake cake pizza".

Check out the very short source code for more info.

How to use object generation (ObjectiveHealing)

Objects can be generated as well. The idea is roughly the same (a tree with special bits that collapses into something without) but the mechanism more nuanced and the end result can be something other than a string.

Take this example:

const data = {
  "start": {
    "pizzaKind": {
      $pick: [
        "special", "original", "Italian-style"
      ]
    },
    "pizzaTopping": {
      $pick: [
        "pepperoni",
        "pineapple",
        "mushroom",
      ]
    }
  }
}

Using it will generate an object with pizzaKind equal to one of "special", "original" or "Italian-style". Likewise the pizzaTopping prop will be selected at random.

It is used much in the same way:

const { ObjectiveHealing } = require("textual-healing");

const t = new ObjectiveHealing(data);

t.start() // { pizzaKind: 'original', pizzaTopping: 'mushroom' }