lipsum-cpp

A lightweight, header-only C++ library for generating sample Lorem Ipsum text. Useful for prototyping apps, UI testing, and anywhere placeholder text is needed.

Features

• Header-only (just lipsum.hpp and lipsum.inl required)
• Customizable number of paragraphs, sentences, sentence fragments, and words
• C++ and C API (static/shared library and wrapper builds supported)
• CMake support for easy integration
• Example code and live demo available

Installation

lipsum-cpp has been mainly tested on Linux and WebAssembly as well as cross-compiled to Windows, although it could likely run on other operating systems as well.

Prerequisites

• A C/C++ compiler
• Optionally CMake, a build system (e.g. Make, Ninja, Visual Studio, ...), Doxygen, Python, and Git

Installation (Debian-based):

#Required
sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential
#Recommended
sudo apt install cmake
#Optional
sudo apt install ninja-build python3 doxygen git

Header-only usage

Simply copy lipsum.hpp and lipsum.inl into your source tree.

Manual static library + C wrapper build

Not recommended.

mkdir -p obj
mkdir -p bin
g++ -c src/lipsum.cpp -DLIPSUM_BUILD_STATIC -o obj/lipsum.o
g++ -c src/lipsum_h.cpp -DLIPSUM_BUILD_STATIC -o obj/lipsum_h.o
ar rcs bin/liblipsum-cpp.a obj/lipsum_h.o obj/lipsum.o
# build example
gcc examples/CWrapper.c -Isrc -Lbin -llipsum-cpp -DLIPSUM_BUILD_STATIC -o bin/CWrapper

Using CMake (Recommended)

1. Clone or add this repo as a submodule:

   git submodule add https://github.com/LambBread/lipsum-cpp.git

2. Add to your CMake project:

   add_subdirectory(lipsum-cpp)
   target_link_libraries(your_target lipsum-cpp)

3. To build as a static library (optional):
   Set LPSM_BUILD_STATIC=ON in your CMake options.

4. To build as a shared library (optional): Set LPSM_BUILD_SHARED=ON in your CMake options.

5. For C wrapper builds, set either LPSM_BUILD_STATIC or LPSM_BUILD_SHARED, and LPSM_BUILD_CWRAPPER all to ON.

Usage

Basic example

#ifndef LIPSUM_BUILD_STATIC
#define LIPSUM_IMPLEMENTATION //only for header-only usage
#endif
#include "lipsum.hpp"
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    // Create a generator with random seed.
    lpsm::Generator generator;

    // Generate 3 paragraphs.
    std::cout << generator.paragraph(3, true);
    
    // Generate 6 sentences.
    std::cout << generator.sentence(6, true) << '\n';
    
    // Generate a sentence fragment.
    std::cout << generator.sentence_fragment() << '\n';
    
    // Generate a word.
    std::cout << generator.word() << '\n';
    
    return 0;
}

Advanced example

#ifndef LIPSUM_BUILD_STATIC
#define LIPSUM_IMPLEMENTATION //only for header-only usage
#endif
#include "lipsum.hpp"
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
    //generate 5 paragraphs 
    //of 5-8 sentences 
    //of 1-3 sentence fragments
    //of 4-9 words, 
    //starting with "Lorem ipsum..." and random seed (default)
    std::cout << lpsm::GenerateParagraphs();
    //generate 10 paragraphs 
    //of 7-10 sentences 
    //of 3-6 sentence fragments 
    //of 6-9 words, 
    //not starting with "Lorem ipsum...", and seed 69
    std::cout << lpsm::GenerateParagraphs(
        10, 
        lpsm::ArgVec2(6, 9),
        lpsm::ArgVec2(3, 6),
        lpsm::ArgVec2(7, 10),
        false, 69
    );
    return 0;
}

Examples

• See the examples/ folder for sample code.
• Live demo

Documentation

The documentation is available here

C API Usage

For C projects, use the C wrapper (lipsum.h) and call functions with the lpsm_ prefix. See the examples/README.md for details.

Scripts

Utility scripts (see scripts/):

• split.py: Converts the sample lipsum.txt into a vector for lipsum.inl.
• lipsum.txt: Source text for Lorem Ipsum sample generation.

License

lipsum-cpp is under the BSD Zero-Clause License, a very permissive public-domain equivalent license. See LICENSE.md for details.

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Created by LambBread