How to create a random string using PHP?

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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.

Answers

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.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

stevenguyen903-b0bbc7d4890f

you can use

$array = explode(',', $str);
$randomKeys = array_rand($array, 3);
$str = '';
foreach($randomKeys as $key){
  $str .= $array[$key].' ';  // use space or comma
}

Thursday, October 20, 2022

eric_darchis

Number 1:

file_put_contents("foobar.csv", $yourString);

Number 2:

$c = curl_init("http://"...);  
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, array('somefile' => "@foobar.csv"));
$result = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);
print_r($result);

note the @ before the filename

Monday, August 29, 2022

sebastian_patane_masuelli

You can do this by creating an array of strings using split, and then shuffling it with shuffle:

# Split the string into different elements
$strings = split(',', $trans);
# Shuffle the array
shuffle($strings);

# Select 5 elements
$shufl = array_slice($strings,  0, 5);

array_slice is then used to get the first 5 elements of the shuffled array. Another possibility is to use array_rand on the split array:

$shufl = array_rand(array_flip($strings), 5);

Friday, September 23, 2022

barryvdh

Well, you'll have to first create the zipfile, using the ZipArchive class.

Then, send :

The right headers, indicating to the browser it should download something as a zip -- see header() -- there is an example on that manual's page that should help
The content of the zip file, using readfile()

And, finally, delete the zip file from your server, using unlink().

Note : as a security precaution, it might be wise to have a PHP script running automatically (by crontab, typically), that would delete the old zip files in your temporary directory.

This just in case your normal PHP script is, sometimes, interrupted, and doesn't delete the temporary file.

Friday, November 11, 2022

slickmind

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