`faker.system.directoryPath` should have a "depth" option

[lriggle-strib]

Clear and concise description of the problem

When generating a path using faker.system.directoryPath there should be an option to specify how "deep" of a. path should be generated.

Suggested solution

Add parameters to the function that allows the user to specify how deep of a directory path they want generated.

Depth examples:

• 0: /
• 1: /etc, or /usr
• 2: /etc/mail or /usr/lib
• 3: /usr/lib/log

Depth value could be passed either as a parameter, or as part of an "options" object

const asParameter = faker.system.directoryPath(3);

const asOptionsObject = faker.system.directoryPath({ depth: 3 });

If no depth parameter is included, function would behave as it does today.

Alternative

No response

Additional context

This functionality would be extremely useful when generating test data for parent/child path structures. For example, if I'm generating something with a path of /x/y/z, and the structure includes a "parent" property, it would be easier to generate a value that could be used to set both if the depth of the directory structure could be set.

[github-actions]

Thank you for your feature proposal.

We marked it as "waiting for user interest" for now to gather some feedback from our community:

• If you would like to see this feature be implemented, please react to the description with an up-vote (:+1:).
• If you have a suggestion or want to point out some special cases that need to be considered, please leave a comment, so we are aware about them.

We would also like to hear about other community members' use cases for the feature to give us a better understanding of their potential implicit or explicit requirements.

We will start the implementation based on:

• the number of votes ( 👍 ) and comments
• the relevance for the ecosystem
• availability of alternatives and workarounds
• and the complexity of the requested feature

We do this because:

• There are plenty of languages/countries out there and we would like to ensure that every method can cover all or almost all of them.
• Every feature we add to faker has "costs" associated to it:
  • initial costs: design, implementation, reviews, documentation
  • running costs: awareness of the feature itself, more complex module structure, increased bundle size, more work during refactors

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View more issues which are waiting for user interest

[ST-DDT]

• https://fakerjs.dev/api/system.html#directorypath
• Currently the method is implemented using locale data
  

  faker/src/modules/system/index.ts

  Lines 195 to 198 in b8abfc6

  	directoryPath(): string {
  	const paths = this.faker.definitions.system.directory_path;
  	return this.faker.helpers.arrayElement(paths);
  	}

Any suggestions what we should use for folder-names? Do you need absolute paths or relative paths?

[matthewmayer]

If you don't care about it being "realistic" directory names you could use something like:

'/'+faker.word.words({ count: { min: 1, max: 5 } }).replaceAll(" ","/")

[lriggle-strib]

Do you need absolute paths or relative paths?

@ST-DDT The work I'm doing is entirely web based, so I end up using this function to mimic url paths without the domain.

@matthewmayer That's true, I hadn't considered that. I don't need them to be realistic, so this could be an option.

[ST-DDT]

Since it is meant for internet usage anyway, we might want to add an alias to the internet module as well.
I assume there are some differences regarding (dis-)allowed characters in the url paths vs os paths.

[matthewmayer]

Maybe as a seperate issue it would be nice if faker.internet.url() had the option to append a path. at the moment all generated urls are root domains.