At Frontly, while you are building up and testing your apps, you might not have (or choose not to upload) any real data to populate into your blocks. If you are looking to create some generic data values to fill your columns with, here are a few tools you can use so you can test and complete your projects sooner!
One of the most helpful and readily available tools is ChatGPT or any language model like it. If you're looking to generate a list of values, simply enter a prompt with your specifications and it will do just that. You can then copy and paste its response directly into your Sheets.
Examples
"Generate a list of 10 countries from Europe and Asia, the values must be unique."
"Generate a list of 10 names that start with the letter J. Do not include the name Justin."
"Generate a list of dates between January 2023 to January 2024. Have them displayed in YYYY/MM/DD format and make sure they're all dates that land on a Friday."
ChatGPT is also very good at contextualizing any follow-up requests you may have also, and can generate new values to align with the structure and theme of your previous prompt.
Examples
"Provide two staple food dishes from the countries listed earlier."
"Create a brief introduction for person as if it were being written by someone joining a J-name Fanclub."
"Create a fun party theme for each generated day that makes sense for its time of year."
For a more technical approach, Mockaroo is an online tool and service that allows users to generate large sets of realistic-looking test data for various purposes, primarily in for testing and development. Users can more prescriptively define the structure and format of the data they need including constraints, and Mockaroo will generate synthetic data that adheres to those specifications.
For free high quality stock images, Unsplash saves you from needing to wrestle with Google Images to get the generic photo links you need. Simply enter your prompt, select 'Free' in the 'License' dropdown and you'll have access to stock free images that will not have any watermarks. If you choose to download them as assets into your app, just note the file sizes are quite large so you'll want to downsize them otherwise they may take awhile to load.
If you are looking to pull up a list of user portraits quickly, use the link above and change the word 'women' and 'men' interchangeably while modifying the ID from 1 - 99 as you wish. Each combination will return a valid portrait.