6 APIs to generate random content for your prototypes!

I have created dozens of app and website prototypes up to this day, sometimes just to test a technology, and sometimes with the aim of creating a potential source of income.

By presenting these prototypes to friends or future users so many times, I understood one thing: people can't picture themselves using it (and often they don't really know what they want either).

If you put an app with a great design but without any content in a tester's hands, their attention is likely to focus on the lack of content, and their feedback will be biased.

That's why today I'm going to show you 5 APIs that are very easy to use and let you display random content in your application: images, texts, colors, it's all there!

Plus, having random content will let you put your design to the test by trying out possibilities you might not have thought of.

RandomUser

You need to list users, but you don't have any, so this API is made for you!

A simple call to the following URL and you'll be able to retrieve all the personal information (as well as the photo) of a randomly generated user!

The site: https://randomuser.me/
The api: https://randomuser.me/api/

Additional features:

• Generation of multiple profiles in a single request
• Generate a specific gender only
• Add nationality to improve data formatting

I notably used this API for my "John Doe" minimalist template for developer personal websites project to generate random profiles!

Fake Store

Are you building an e-commerce site but you don't have any products to offer yet? Fake Store lets you set up a fake e-commerce business with fictitious products.

The site: https://fakestoreapi.com/
The api: https://fakestoreapi.com/products

In addition to returning random products, this API also lets you simulate users and their ongoing shopping carts.

The project keeps evolving and new features come out from time to time, this API could become an essential tool if it continues to be maintained this way!

Unsplash

I already talked about Unsplash in my previous article "The 10 best (free) graphic resources...", if you haven't read it, I recommend it!

But today I'm talking about this site because it also provides a really convenient (and configurable) random image API

The site: https://unsplash.com
The api: https://source.unsplash.com/random

In terms of configuration, you can request a random photo that:

• respects a certain size
• contains specific keywords
• is currently among the featured photos
• belongs to a specific user
• and more...

The only small downside of this tool is that most photos are available in large sizes, and so sometimes a bit heavy to load, so I recommend using it for your prototypes and tests, but not in production!

Placeholder

You don't want to load images that are too heavy in your project, but you don't want to leave your images empty either? Then placeholder.com is made for you.

The site: https://placeholder.com
The api: https://via.placeholder.com/150

Simply using the url parameters in your image tag, you can request:

• the exact size you want
• a specific background color
• a custom text
• an image format among the most commonly used (.jpg, .png, .gif, etc.)

Isn't life beautiful?

RandomText

You need text content for your application but you're not feeling inspired and you want to avoid Lorem Ipsum?

Thanks to RandomText, you can generate text content (in English) of the size you want, whether in number of words or paragraphs. It's even possible to directly generate lists in html!

The site: https://www.randomtext.me
The api: https://www.randomtext.me/api/gibberish/p-5/1-15

Text generation on the site is broken, but the api works perfectly!

Colr

If you want to give your users the ability to choose their own colors in certain settings of your application, you need to expect anything because most of them won't be designers!

To simulate this artistic frenzy, nothing beats generating random colors and seeing if your overall design still holds up!

The site: http://colr.org
The api: http://www.colr.org/json/color/random