How to create a random string using PHP?

Question

I know that the rand function in PHP generates random integers, but what is the best way to generate a random string such as:

Original string, 9 chars

$string = 'abcdefghi';

Example random string limiting to 6 chars

$string = 'ibfeca';

UPDATE: I have found tons of these types of functions, basically I'm trying to understand the logic behind each step.

UPDATE: The function should generate any amount of chars as required.

Please comment the parts if you reply.

Answer 1

If you want to allow repetitive occurences of characters, you can use this function:

function randString($length, $charset='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789')
{
    $str = '';
    $count = strlen($charset);
    while ($length--) {
        $str .= $charset[mt_rand(0, $count-1)];
    }
    return $str;
}

The basic algorithm is to generate <length> times a random number between 0 and <number of characters> − 1 we use as index to pick a character from our set and concatenate those characters. The 0 and <number of characters> − 1 bounds represent the bounds of the $charset string as the first character is addressed with $charset[0] and the last with $charset[count($charset) - 1].

Answer 2

My favorite:

 echo substr(md5(rand()), 0, 7);

Answer 3

Do you want to create your password by a random permutation of the original letters? Should it just contain unique characters?

Use rand to choose random letters by index.

Answer 4

Well, you didn't clarify all the questions I asked in my comment, but I'll assume that you want a function that can take a string of "possible" characters and a length of string to return. Commented thoroughly as requested, using more variables than I would normally, for clarity:

function get_random_string($valid_chars, $length)
{
    // start with an empty random string
    $random_string = "";

    // count the number of chars in the valid chars string so we know how many choices we have
    $num_valid_chars = strlen($valid_chars);

    // repeat the steps until we've created a string of the right length
    for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++)
    {
        // pick a random number from 1 up to the number of valid chars
        $random_pick = mt_rand(1, $num_valid_chars);

        // take the random character out of the string of valid chars
        // subtract 1 from $random_pick because strings are indexed starting at 0, and we started picking at 1
        $random_char = $valid_chars[$random_pick-1];

        // add the randomly-chosen char onto the end of our string so far
        $random_string .= $random_char;
    }

    // return our finished random string
    return $random_string;
}

To call this function with your example data, you'd call it something like:

$original_string = 'abcdefghi';
$random_string = get_random_string($original_string, 6);

Note that this function doesn't check for uniqueness in the valid chars passed to it. For example, if you called it with a valid chars string of 'AAAB', it would be three times more likely to choose an A for each letter as a B. That could be considered a bug or a feature, depending on your needs.

Answer 5

If you're not concerned about time, memory, or cpu efficiency, and if your system can handle it, why not give this algorithm a try?!

function randStr($len, $charset = 'abcdABCD0123') {
    $out = '';
    $str = array();

    for ($i = 0; $i < PHP_INT_MAX; $i++) {
        $str[$i] = $charset;

        shuffle($str);
        $charset .= implode($charset, $str);
        $charset = str_shuffle($charset);
    }

    $str = array_flip($str);
    $str = array_keys($str);

    for ($i = 0; $i < PHP_INT_MAX; $i++) {
        shuffle($str);
    }

    $str = implode('', $str);

    for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($str); $i++) {
        $index = mt_rand(1, strlen($str));
        $out .= $str[$index - 1];
    }

    for ($i = 0; $i < PHP_INT_MAX; $i++) {
        $out = str_shuffle($out);
    }

    return substr($out, 0, $len);
}

Maybe this will read better if it uses recursion, but I'm not sure if PHP uses tail recursion or not...

Answer 6

function generate_random_string($name_length = 8) {
    $alpha_numeric = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789';
    return substr(str_shuffle(str_repeat($alpha_numeric, $name_length)), 0, $name_length);
}

Updated the code as per mzhang's great suggestion in the comments below.