Fields should provide dummy content upon request

Interesting idea, but I'm not sure I completely understand which fields you would implement. Are you assuming the admin will have already created some fields and devel will just populate them, or that we would create dummy fields out of whatever CCK fields are enabled and then populate them with dummy values?

And what exactly would you want returned? An array of populated field arrays for that content type, or a node object with the fields attached, or what?

Just looking at this, not actually trying it out, I think this is an interesting and useful idea.

The code to identify the number to use for $max and the selection of allowed values, if there are any, is going to be the same for all fields that let the content module handle multiples, so maybe we could simplify this by putting this code into the content module's default field instead of each individual field, and have the default field invoke the individual fields to get a dummy value to insert as needed into the field array. Like we're doing now with widgets, maybe change it so the field module just responds by creating a single valid random dummy value when invoked and let either the content module or devel combine them into a full field.

The only other issue, especially if we simplify this by having devel or content combine the values, is that we have to think about the more complex fields that handle things differently and be sure we have a method where they can opt out of our simplified handling to provide their own values.

OK, here's one theoretical way to do it:

1) Put the code in your patch into the content module's default field instead of the text field.

2) Where you get to the place in the code where you need a random value that is not coming from the allowed values list, invoke a hook_content_generate($field) to get a random valid value. Add that hook into the individual field modules instead of having them use the 'generate' op.

3) That means that modules letting the content module handle this will *not* have a 'generate' op, Fields that want to do their own handling can create their own 'generate' op to do something different.

4) The content module default field gets called after the individual fields, so it should detect if a value has already been provided by the field and do nothing in that case, otherwise provide the value.

I can see your point, and it's probably cleaner to do the work in devel anyway, so that sounds good to me. I would just keep in mind that it is possible that some field modules will want to create their own, different, method of generating dummy content and allow for some way they can do that.

I ran into troubles too with http://drupal.org/project/node_factory when creating cck nodes on the fly through i.e. workflow_ng.

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There is a patch for this in the Devel module node and I've added code to the 6.x version of CCK that will work if that patch or something else similar to what is discussed there gets committed. I'm marking it 'to be ported' to keep it open until we see what happens in devel and in case the devel module wants to port that capability back to 5.x.

Moshe committed the Devel end of this and I made some more changes and committed them here, so at this point this should work to generate random content for text, number, nodereference userreference, and date modules. Other modules can follow the examples to add support for this feature. The code for everything but the Date module is in the new content.devel.inc file in the CCK includes folder.

Not sure whether or not this will get back ported, so I'll mark it fixed for now.

This is a good + necessary idea. Fields should be autopopulated using the devel module, but if, for example, it's an email field, well the field needs to have something that will pass the validation. That should be handled by the field and not by devel - consequently this is quite a good addition. It's not much work either for field developers.

Why are you re-opening this issue? This is already done and committed and is a part of the code.

Fields can decide whether or not they want to provide dummy content and decide for themselves what content to provide by implementing hook_content_generate(). The content module iterates through all the node's fields and invokes the hook and sends that data back to the devel module. The devel module does not decide what content to create, it just inserts the values provided by the content module.

The hook is implemented by the core CCK fields in the file content.devel.inc and that code can be used as an example for any other field modules that want to do this. The field modules that implement the hook are obviously responsible for creating valid values.