Felix Ker's blog

Lately I was googling for the shortest and simplest way of generating some random passwords. So here we go. I’ll share with you what I found and how I applied them.

VB.Net

Public Function GenerateRandomPassword(ByVal length as Integer) as String
Dim strGuid as String = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString()
strGuid= strGuid.Replace(“-”, String.Empty)
Return strGuid.Substring(0, length)
End Function

C#

public string GenerateRandomPassword(int length)
{
string strGuid = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
strGuid = strGuid.Replace(“-”, string.Empty);
return guidResult.Substring(0, length);
}

Explanation (for VB.Net and C#)

For C# and VB.Net, they both utilise .Net’s System.Guid class. (Correct me if I’m wrong) NewGuid().ToString() returns a string of 32 hexadecimals (excluding the “-”).

Although its only 0-9 and A-F, I like it as it’s a very simple way to generate the password of my desired length.

Now, let’s move on to PHP. For PHP, it can be very simple too!

PHP

function createRandomPassword($length) {
return substr(md5(date(“D dS M,Y h:i:s a”)),0,$length);
}

Did you see how short things can be?

Explanation (for PHP)

Firstly, I’m generating a string from Datetime with a simple format. Next, I’ll md5 it. You can choose to sha1 it, which is the same. And finally to choose a length of password. Thats all.

Disadvantages for my way of generating (for C#, VB.Net and PHP)

1. Only “A-F”. But it doesn’t really matter to me.
2. Maximum length of 32. You can ofcourse re-generate, but who will need such a long password?

Generating passwords can be simple, right? What other ways can you share with me?