How can I generate random alphanumeric strings?

Question

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

Answer 1

public static class StringHelper
{
    private static readonly Random random = new Random();

    private const int randomSymbolsDefaultCount = 8;
    private const string availableChars = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789";

    private static int randomSymbolsIndex = 0;

    public static string GetRandomSymbols()
    {
        return GetRandomSymbols(randomSymbolsDefaultCount);
    }

    public static string GetRandomSymbols(int count)
    {
        var index = randomSymbolsIndex;
        var result = new string(
            Enumerable.Repeat(availableChars, count)
                      .Select(s => {
                          index += random.Next(s.Length);
                          if (index >= s.Length)
                              index -= s.Length;
                          return s[index];
                      })
                      .ToArray());
        randomSymbolsIndex = index;
        return result;
    }
}

Answer 2

Here is a mechanism to generate a random alpha-numeric string (I use this to generate passwords and test data) without defining the alphabet and numbers,

CleanupBase64 will remove necessary parts in the string and keep adding random alpha-numeric letters recursively.

        public static string GenerateRandomString(int length)
        {
            var numArray = new byte[length];
            new RNGCryptoServiceProvider().GetBytes(numArray);
            return CleanUpBase64String(Convert.ToBase64String(numArray), length);
        }

        private static string CleanUpBase64String(string input, int maxLength)
        {
            input = input.Replace("-", "");
            input = input.Replace("=", "");
            input = input.Replace("/", "");
            input = input.Replace("+", "");
            input = input.Replace(" ", "");
            while (input.Length < maxLength)
                input = input + GenerateRandomString(maxLength);
            return input.Length <= maxLength ?
                input.ToUpper() : //In my case I want capital letters
                input.ToUpper().Substring(0, maxLength);
        }

Answer 3

A solution without using Random :

var chars = Enumerable.Repeat("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789", 8);

var randomStr = new string(chars.SelectMany(str => str)
                                .OrderBy(c => Guid.NewGuid())
                                .Take(8).ToArray());

Answer 4

If your values are not completely random, but in fact may depend on something - you may compute an md5 or sha1 hash of that 'somwthing' and then truncate it to whatever length you want.

Also you may generate and truncate a guid.

Answer 5

not 100% sure, as I didn't test EVERY option here, but of the ones I did test, this one is the fastest. timed it with stopwatch and it showed 9-10 ticks so if speed is more important than security, try this:

 private static Random random = new Random(); 
 public static string Random(int length)
     {   
          var stringChars = new char[length];

          for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
              {
                  stringChars[i] = (char)random.Next(0x30, 0x7a);                  
                  return new string(stringChars);
              }
     }

Answer 6

A slightly cleaner version of DTB's solution.

    var chars = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789";
    var random = new Random();
    var list = Enumerable.Repeat(0, 8).Select(x=>chars[random.Next(chars.Length)]);
    return string.Join("", list);

Your style preferences may vary.