How can I generate random alphanumeric strings?

Question

How can I generate a random 8 character alphanumeric string in C#?

Answer 1

UPDATED based on comments. The original implementation generated a-h ~1.95% of the time and the remaining characters ~1.56% of the time. The update generates all characters ~1.61% of the time.

FRAMEWORK SUPPORT - .NET Core 3 (and future platforms that support .NET Standard 2.1 or above) provides a cryptographically sound method RandomNumberGenerator.GetInt32() to generate a random integer within a desired range.

Unlike some of the alternatives presented, this one is cryptographically sound.

using System;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Text;

namespace UniqueKey
{
    public class KeyGenerator
    {
        internal static readonly char[] chars =
            "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890".ToCharArray(); 

        public static string GetUniqueKey(int size)
        {            
            byte[] data = new byte[4*size];
            using (RNGCryptoServiceProvider crypto = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider())
            {
                crypto.GetBytes(data);
            }
            StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(size);
            for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
            {
                var rnd = BitConverter.ToUInt32(data, i * 4);
                var idx = rnd % chars.Length;

                result.Append(chars[idx]);
            }

            return result.ToString();
        }

        public static string GetUniqueKeyOriginal_BIASED(int size)
        {
            char[] chars =
                "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890".ToCharArray();
            byte[] data = new byte[size];
            using (RNGCryptoServiceProvider crypto = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider())
            {
                crypto.GetBytes(data);
            }
            StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(size);
            foreach (byte b in data)
            {
                result.Append(chars[b % (chars.Length)]);
            }
            return result.ToString();
        }
    }
}

Based on a discussion of alternatives here and updated/modified based on the comments below.

Here's a small test harness that demonstrates the distribution of characters in the old and updated output. For a deep discussion of the analysis of randomness, check out random.org.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using UniqueKey;

namespace CryptoRNGDemo
{
    class Program
    {

        const int REPETITIONS = 1000000;
        const int KEY_SIZE = 32;

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Original BIASED implementation");
            PerformTest(REPETITIONS, KEY_SIZE, KeyGenerator.GetUniqueKeyOriginal_BIASED);

            Console.WriteLine("Updated implementation");
            PerformTest(REPETITIONS, KEY_SIZE, KeyGenerator.GetUniqueKey);
            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        static void PerformTest(int repetitions, int keySize, Func generator)
        {
            Dictionary counts = new Dictionary();
            foreach (var ch in UniqueKey.KeyGenerator.chars) counts.Add(ch, 0);

            for (int i = 0; i < REPETITIONS; i++)
            {
                var key = generator(KEY_SIZE); 
                foreach (var ch in key) counts[ch]++;
            }

            int totalChars = counts.Values.Sum();
            foreach (var ch in UniqueKey.KeyGenerator.chars)
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"{ch}: {(100.0 * counts[ch] / totalChars).ToString("#.000")}%");
            }
        }
    }
}