a cli app that simply generates a random 64 character alphanumeric string.

I am kind of sick and tired of not being able to generate a simple alphanumeric random string for passwords or what not without relying on a web browser.

I really like something in the terminal so that it is kind of temporary yet I can copy and paste it when I need it, and be able to simply close the terminal window when I am done.

I find it surprising that there is no simple cli app to do this... I resort to doing things like dd if=/dev/urandom count=1 | base64, but this is not ideal, it is a long command and just not very configurable. most of the time I just want a simple alphanumeric string but base64 gives all kinds of things, which is great for what it is, but not really intended for what I am doing most of the time.

so here it is, a purpose built cli app just for generating random alphanumeric strings.

random_cli requires python 3.6 or higher as random_cli uses the new secrets module introduced in python 3.6.

you can install random_cli with pip or from source. (or both?)

pip:

python3 -m pip install random_cli

from source:

cd /path/to/repo
sudo python3 -m pip install .

example:

random

gives you exactly 64 random alphanumeric characters.

you can specify the number of characters you want by passing a positive integer to the command.

for example you can generate 10 characters instead by passing 10 to the command:

random 10

setup virtualenv:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

from this point we assume that python refers to python 3 in virtualenv.

to run unit test (via python 3 pytest module):

python -m pytest --flake8 -v

install pytest if you haven't installed from requirements.txt from above:

python -m pip install pytest

to build command for testing (e.g. within virtualenv):

python setup.py develop

after which you can run it by running random in the terminal in virtualenv.