How to generate a random alpha-numeric string

Question

I\'ve been looking for a simple Java algorithm to generate a pseudo-random alpha-numeric string. In my situation it would be used as a unique session/key identifie

Answer 1

Here it is in Java:

import static java.lang.Math.round;
import static java.lang.Math.random;
import static java.lang.Math.pow;
import static java.lang.Math.abs;
import static java.lang.Math.min;
import static org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils.leftPad

public class RandomAlphaNum {
  public static String gen(int length) {
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
    for (int i = length; i > 0; i -= 12) {
      int n = min(12, abs(i));
      sb.append(leftPad(Long.toString(round(random() * pow(36, n)), 36), n, '0'));
    }
    return sb.toString();
  }
}

Here's a sample run:

scala> RandomAlphaNum.gen(42)
res3: java.lang.String = uja6snx21bswf9t89s00bxssu8g6qlu16ffzqaxxoy