PHP random string generator

php, random, string

Solution

To answer this question specifically, two problems:

- `$randstring` is not in scope when you echo it.

- The characters are not getting concatenated together in the loop.

Here's a code snippet with the corrections:

function generateRandomString($length = 10) {
    $characters = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ';
    $charactersLength = strlen($characters);
    $randomString = '';
    for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {
        $randomString .= $characters[random_int(0, $charactersLength - 1)];
    }
    return $randomString;
}

Output the random string with the call below:

// Echo the random string.
// Optionally, you can give it a desired string length.
echo generateRandomString();

Please note that previous version of this answer used `rand()` instead of `random_int()` and therefore generated predictable random strings. So it was changed to be more secure, following advice from this answer.

Problem

I'm trying to create a randomized string in PHP, and I get absolutely no output with this: ``` <?php function RandomString() { $characters = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'; $randstring = ''; for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) { $randstring = $characters[rand(0, strlen($characters))]; } return $randstring; } RandomString(); echo $randstring; ``` What am I doing wrong?

Original source

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