HaikunatorJS

Haikunator generates Heroku-like random names consisting of adjectives, nouns, and an optional token. You can instantiate the class with default settings or provide a configuration object to customize the word lists, seed, and default token behavior. You can then call the .haikunate() method to generate a name, optionally passing specific overrides for that single call.

import Haikunator from 'haikunator'

// Basic usage
const haikunator = new Haikunator()
const name = haikunator.haikunate() // e.g., "wispy-dust-1337"

// Usage with overrides
const customName = haikunator.haikunate({ tokenLength: 6, delimiter: '.' })

You can install Haikunator using npm for Node.js applications or via Deno.

npm:

npm install --save haikunator

Deno:

deno add @atrox/haikunator

To generate a name consisting only of adjectives and nouns without a trailing token, set tokenLength to 0 in the .haikunate() options.

// No token, default delimiter
haikunator.haikunate({ tokenLength: 0 }) // => "cold-wildflower"

// No token, space delimiter
haikunator.haikunate({ tokenLength: 0, delimiter: ' ' }) // => "delicate haze"

// No token, no delimiter
haikunator.haikunate({ tokenLength: 0, delimiter: '' }) // => "billowingleaf"

Use the Haikunator class to generate random, Heroku-style names. You can provide custom lists of adjectives and nouns, or a seed to ensure deterministic output via the random-seed library.

To configure the structure of the generated tokens (like length or character sets), pass a defaults object of type Config in the constructor.

import Haikunator from 'haikunatorjs';

const haikunator = new Haikunator({
  adjectives: ['swift', 'brave'],
  nouns: ['lion', 'eagle'],
  seed: 'my-secret-seed',
  defaults: {
    delimiter: '_',
    tokenLength: 6
  }
});

The haikunate() method generates a single string consisting of a random adjective, a random noun, and a random token, joined by a delimiter.

You can override the instance's default configuration by passing a Config object directly to the haikunate() call.

// Uses instance defaults
const name = haikunator.haikunate();

// Overrides configuration for this specific call
const customName = haikunator.haikunate({
  delimiter: ':',
  tokenLength: 2
});

The Config type controls how the random token portion of the name is generated. These options can be set globally in the Haikunator constructor via defaults or locally in the haikunate() method.

Note: If tokenHex is set to true, it will override any custom tokenChars provided.

type Config = {
  delimiter?: string;
  tokenLength?: number;
  tokenHex?: boolean;
  tokenChars?: string;
};

When instantiating the Haikunator class, you can provide an Options object to customize the generator's vocabulary and randomness.

type Options = {
  defaults?: Config;
  adjectives?: string[];
  nouns?: string[];
  seed?: string;
};