Random string generation with upper case letters and digits

Question

I want to generate a string of size N.

It should be made up of numbers and uppercase English letters such as:

• 6U1S75
• 4Z4UKK
• U911K4

Answer 1

Use Numpy's random.choice() function

import numpy as np
import string        

if __name__ == '__main__':
    length = 16
    a = np.random.choice(list(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits), length)                
    print(''.join(a))

Documentation is here http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.10.0/reference/generated/numpy.random.choice.html

Answer 2

(1) This will give you all caps and numbers:

import string, random
passkey=''
for x in range(8):
    if random.choice([1,2]) == 1:
        passkey += passkey.join(random.choice(string.ascii_uppercase))
    else:
        passkey += passkey.join(random.choice(string.digits))
print passkey 

(2) If you later want to include lowercase letters in your key, then this will also work:

import string, random
passkey=''
for x in range(8):
    if random.choice([1,2]) == 1:
        passkey += passkey.join(random.choice(string.ascii_letters))
    else:
        passkey += passkey.join(random.choice(string.digits))
print passkey  

Answer 3

If you need a random string rather than a pseudo random one, you should use os.urandom as the source

from os import urandom
from itertools import islice, imap, repeat
import string

def rand_string(length=5):
    chars = set(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits)
    char_gen = (c for c in imap(urandom, repeat(1)) if c in chars)
    return ''.join(islice(char_gen, None, length))

Answer 4

>>> import random
>>> str = []
>>> chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890'
>>> num = int(raw_input('How long do you want the string to be?  '))
How long do you want the string to be?  10
>>> for k in range(1, num+1):
...    str.append(random.choice(chars))
...
>>> str = "".join(str)
>>> str
'tm2JUQ04CK'

The random.choice function picks a random entry in a list. You also create a list so that you can append the character in the for statement. At the end str is ['t', 'm', '2', 'J', 'U', 'Q', '0', '4', 'C', 'K'], but the str = "".join(str) takes care of that, leaving you with 'tm2JUQ04CK'.

Hope this helps!

Answer 5

Simply use Python's builtin uuid:

If UUIDs are okay for your purposes, use the built-in uuid package.

One Line Solution:

import uuid; uuid.uuid4().hex.upper()[0:6]

In Depth Version:

Example:

import uuid
uuid.uuid4() #uuid4 => full random uuid
# Outputs something like: UUID('0172fc9a-1dac-4414-b88d-6b9a6feb91ea')

If you need exactly your format (for example, "6U1S75"), you can do it like this:

import uuid

def my_random_string(string_length=10):
    """Returns a random string of length string_length."""
    random = str(uuid.uuid4()) # Convert UUID format to a Python string.
    random = random.upper() # Make all characters uppercase.
    random = random.replace("-","") # Remove the UUID '-'.
    return random[0:string_length] # Return the random string.

print(my_random_string(6)) # For example, D9E50C

Answer 6

I'd do it this way:

import random
from string import digits, ascii_uppercase

legals = digits + ascii_uppercase

def rand_string(length, char_set=legals):

    output = ''
    for _ in range(length): output += random.choice(char_set)
    return output

Or just:

def rand_string(length, char_set=legals):

    return ''.join( random.choice(char_set) for _ in range(length) )