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Novus Examples

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What Novus Examples is

Novus Examples is a library of real, downloadable example and test files. Every file is generated by a deterministic script, not collected from the web. That single design choice is what makes the library useful: because a script produced each file, every file ships with an exact specification, a fixed random seed where randomness is involved, and — where it matters — a paired counterpart for before/after testing. Nothing here is copyrighted stock content, so everything is free to use.

Reading a file page

Each file has its own page with four things:

  • A preview — an inline image, an audio player, or the first lines of a text file.
  • A spec table — the file's exact properties: dimensions, colour space, noise sigma and seed, silence timestamps, form field names, encoding, formulas, and so on.
  • Purpose tags — what the file is good for testing, each linking to a purpose page.
  • One download button — a direct link to the static file. There is exactly one per page.

The spec table is the point. You are testing against a documented input, not a mystery file.

Pairs

A pair is a 1:1 relationship between two files that belong together: a clean image and its noisy version, a colour image and its greyscale conversion, a text document and its image-only scanned twin. Pairs are what serious testing needs — one file is the input, the other is the expected result or the ground truth you score against. When a file has a pair, its page links straight to it.

Groups and conversion sets

A group ties together a family of files that share the same content: one test card exported across PNG, WebP, AVIF, and more, or a resolution ladder from 16px to 4K, or a template offered as both DOCX and PDF. Groups are how you test converters — convert one member and diff against the expected twin.

Purpose tags

Every file is tagged with what it helps you test. Browse them under Browse by purpose: denoise testing, CSV parsing, OCR, auto-trim, form parsing, encoding detection, and more. Purpose pages are the fastest way to find the exact fixtures for a task.

Licensing

Every file in the library is free for any use, with no attribution required — including commercial use. See the license for the plain-language terms. The intentionally corrupt files are provided as-is for error-handling tests; they are not valid files by design and are clearly labelled as such.

Stable URLs

File URLs, ids, and download paths are permanent. Once a file ships, its address never changes. That means you can link to a fixture from a README, embed its download URL in a CI pipeline, or bookmark it, and it will keep working.

Using fixtures in CI

Because every download is a static URL, you can fetch fixtures directly in a test pipeline:

curl -O https://examples.novusstreamsolutions.com/files/data/csv/messy-csv-quoted-commas-newlines.csv

Point your parser, converter, or filter at the downloaded file and assert against the documented spec. For paired fixtures, download both the input and its reference and score one against the other. Nothing requires an account or an API key.

Where to start

Browse the Images, Audio, Documents, Data, and Templates libraries, search from any page, or open a text file directly in the in-browser editor.