Random string generation with upper case letters and digits

Answer in one line:

''.join(random.choice(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits) for _ in range(N))

or even shorter starting with Python 3.6 using random.choices():

''.join(random.choices(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits, k=N))

A cryptographically more secure version: see this post

''.join(random.SystemRandom().choice(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits) for _ in range(N))

In details, with a clean function for further reuse:

>>> import string
>>> import random
>>> def id_generator(size=6, chars=string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits):
...    return ''.join(random.choice(chars) for _ in range(size))
...
>>> id_generator()
'G5G74W'
>>> id_generator(3, "6793YUIO")
'Y3U'

How does it work ?

We import string, a module that contains sequences of common ASCII characters, and random, a module that deals with random generation.

string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits just concatenates the list of characters representing uppercase ASCII chars and digits:

>>> string.ascii_uppercase
'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
>>> string.digits
'0123456789'
>>> string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits
'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789'

Then we use a list comprehension to create a list of 'n' elements:

>>> range(4) # range create a list of 'n' numbers
[0, 1, 2, 3]
>>> ['elem' for _ in range(4)] # we use range to create 4 times 'elem'
['elem', 'elem', 'elem', 'elem']

In the example above, we use [ to create the list, but we don't in the id_generator function so Python doesn't create the list in memory, but generates the elements on the fly, one by one (more about this here).

Instead of asking to create 'n' times the string elem, we will ask Python to create 'n' times a random character, picked from a sequence of characters:

>>> random.choice("abcde")
'a'
>>> random.choice("abcde")
'd'
>>> random.choice("abcde")
'b'

Therefore random.choice(chars) for _ in range(size) really is creating a sequence of size characters. Characters that are randomly picked from chars:

>>> [random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3)]
['a', 'b', 'b']
>>> [random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3)]
['e', 'b', 'e']
>>> [random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3)]
['d', 'a', 'c']

Then we just join them with an empty string so the sequence becomes a string:

>>> ''.join(['a', 'b', 'b'])
'abb'
>>> [random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3)]
['d', 'c', 'b']
>>> ''.join(random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3))
'dac'

A simpler, faster but slightly less random way is to use random.sample instead of choosing each letter separately, If n-repetitions are allowed, enlarge your random basis by n times e.g.

import random
import string

char_set = string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits
print ''.join(random.sample(char_set*6, 6))

Note: random.sample prevents character reuse, multiplying the size of the character set makes multiple repetitions possible, but they are still less likely then they are in a pure random choice. If we go for a string of length 6, and we pick 'X' as the first character, in the choice example, the odds of getting 'X' for the second character are the same as the odds of getting 'X' as the first character. In the random.sample implementation, the odds of getting 'X' as any subsequent character are only 6/7 the chance of getting it as the first character

I'd do it this way:

import random
from string import digits, ascii_uppercase

legals = digits + ascii_uppercase

def rand_string(length, char_set=legals):

    output = ''
    for _ in range(length): output += random.choice(char_set)
    return output

Or just:

def rand_string(length, char_set=legals):

    return ''.join( random.choice(char_set) for _ in range(length) )

Sometimes 0 (zero) & O (letter O) can be confusing. So I use

import uuid
uuid.uuid4().hex[:6].upper().replace('0','X').replace('O','Y')

I used this method to generate random string of length n from a -> z

import random
s = ''.join(random.choice([chr(i) for i in range(ord('a'),ord('z'))]) for _ in range(10))

I was looking at the different answers and took time to read the documentation of secrets

The secrets module is used for generating cryptographically strong random numbers suitable for managing data such as passwords, account authentication, security tokens, and related secrets.

In particularly, secrets should be used in preference to the default pseudo-random number generator in the random module, which is designed for modelling and simulation, not security or cryptography.

Looking more into what it has to offer I found a very handy function if you want to mimic an ID like Google Drive IDs:

secrets.token_urlsafe([nbytes=None])
Return a random URL-safe text string, containing nbytes random bytes. The text is Base64 encoded, so on average each byte results in approximately 1.3 characters. If nbytes is None or not supplied, a reasonable default is used.

Use it the following way:

import secrets
import math

def id_generator():
    id = secrets.token_urlsafe(math.floor(32 / 1.3))
    return id

print(id_generator())

Output a 32 characters length id:

joXR8dYbBDAHpVs5ci6iD-oIgPhkeQFk

I know this is slightly different from the OP's question but I expect that it would still be helpful to many who were looking for the same use-case that I was looking for.

Security Oriented Approach

Our recommendation for anything security related is to avoid "rolling you own" and to use the secrets module which is specifically vetted for security.

This is from the best practices section of the docs:

import string
import secrets
alphabet = string.ascii_letters + string.digits
password = ''.join(secrets.choice(alphabet) for i in range(8))

Since you specifically asked for uppercase letters, you can either substitute ascii_uppercase for ascii_letters, or just uppercase the password with:

password = password.upper()

Standard Approach Not Aiming for Security

The canonical approach to this problem (as specified) uses the choices() function in the random module:

>>> from random import choices
>>> from string import ascii_uppercase, digits

>>> population = ascii_uppercase + digits
>>> str.join('', choices(population, k=6))
'6JWF1H'

import random
q=2
o=1
list  =[r'a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','s','0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','0']
while(q>o):
    print("")

    for i in range(1,128):
        x=random.choice(list)
        print(x,end="")

Here length of string can be changed in for loop i.e for i in range(1,length) It is simple algorithm which is easy to understand. it uses list so you can discard characters that you do not need.

I would like to suggest you next option:

import crypt
n = 10
crypt.crypt("any sring").replace('/', '').replace('.', '').upper()[-n:-1]

Paranoic mode:

import uuid
import crypt
n = 10
crypt.crypt(str(uuid.uuid4())).replace('/', '').replace('.', '').upper()[-n:-1]

import string, random
lower = string.ascii_lowercase
upper = string.ascii_uppercase
digits = string.digits
special = '!"£$%^&*.,@#/?'

def rand_pass(l=4, u=4, d=4, s=4):
    p = []
    [p.append(random.choice(lower)) for x in range(l)]
    [p.append(random.choice(upper)) for x in range(u)]
    [p.append(random.choice(digits)) for x in range(d)]
    [p.append(random.choice(special)) for x in range(s)]
    random.shuffle(p)
    return "".join(p)

print(rand_pass())
# @5U,@A4yIZvnp%51

Two methods :

import random, math

def randStr_1(chars:str, length:int) -> str:
    chars *= math.ceil(length / len(chars))
    chars = letters[0:length]
    chars = list(chars)
    random.shuffle(characters)

    return ''.join(chars)

def randStr_2(chars:str, length:int) -> str:
    return ''.join(random.choice(chars) for i in range(chars))

Benchmark :

from timeit import timeit

setup = """
import os, subprocess, time, string, random, math

def randStr_1(letters:str, length:int) -> str:
    letters *= math.ceil(length / len(letters))
    letters = letters[0:length]
    letters = list(letters)
    random.shuffle(letters)
    return ''.join(letters)

def randStr_2(letters:str, length:int) -> str:
    return ''.join(random.choice(letters) for i in range(length))
"""

print('Method 1 vs Method 2', ', run 10 times each.')

for length in [100,1000,10000,50000,100000,500000,1000000]:
    print(length, 'characters:')

    eff1 = timeit("randStr_1(string.ascii_letters, {})".format(length), setup=setup, number=10)
    eff2 = timeit("randStr_2(string.ascii_letters, {})".format(length), setup=setup, number=10)
    print('\t{}s : {}s'.format(round(eff1, 6), round(eff2, 6)))
    print('\tratio = {} : {}\n'.format(eff1/eff1, round(eff2/eff1, 2)))

Output :

Method 1 vs Method 2 , run 10 times each.

100 characters:
    0.001411s : 0.00179s
    ratio = 1.0 : 1.27

1000 characters:
    0.013857s : 0.017603s
    ratio = 1.0 : 1.27

10000 characters:
    0.13426s : 0.151169s
    ratio = 1.0 : 1.13

50000 characters:
    0.709403s : 0.855136s
    ratio = 1.0 : 1.21

100000 characters:
    1.360735s : 1.674584s
    ratio = 1.0 : 1.23

500000 characters:
    6.754923s : 7.160508s
    ratio = 1.0 : 1.06

1000000 characters:
    11.232965s : 14.223914s
    ratio = 1.0 : 1.27

The performance of first method is better.

Generate random 16-byte ID containig letters, digits, '_' and '-'

os.urandom(16).translate((f'{string.ascii_letters}{string.digits}-_'*4).encode('ascii'))

If you want an easy-to-use but highly customisable key generator, use key-generator pypi package.

Here is the GitHub repo where you can find the complete documentation.

You can customise it to give a string jist like you want with many more options. Here's an example:

from key_generator.key_generator import generate

custom_key = generate(2, ['-', ':'], 3, 10, type_of_value = 'char', capital = 'mix', seed = 17).get_key()
print(custom_key)  # ZLFdHXIUe-ekwJCu

Hope this helps :)

Disclaimer: This uses the key-generator library which I made.

None of the answers so far guarantee presence of certain categories of characters like upper, lower, digits etc; so other answers may result in passwords that do not have digits, etc. Surprised that such a function is not part of standard lib. Here is what I use:

def random_password(*, nchars = 7, min_nupper = 3, ndigits = 3, nspecial = 3, special=string.punctuation):
    letters = random.choices(string.ascii_lowercase, k=nchars)
    letters_upper = random.choices(string.ascii_uppercase, k=min_nupper)
    digits = random.choices(string.digits, k=ndigits)
    specials = random.choices(special, k=nspecial)

    password_chars = letters + letters_upper + digits + specials
    random.shuffle(password_chars)

    return ''.join(password_chars)

A random generator function without duplicates using a set to store values which have been generated before. Note this will cost some memory with very large strings or amounts and it probably will slow down a bit. The generator will stop at a given amount or when the maximum possible combinations are reached.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from typing import Generator
from random import SystemRandom as RND
from string import ascii_uppercase, digits


def string_generator(size: int = 1, amount: int = 1) -> Generator[str, None, None]:
    """
    Return x random strings of a fixed length.

    :param size: string length, defaults to 1
    :type size: int, optional
    :param amount: amount of random strings to generate, defaults to 1
    :type amount: int, optional
    :yield: Yield composed random string if unique
    :rtype: Generator[str, None, None]
    """
    CHARS = list(ascii_uppercase + digits)
    LIMIT = len(CHARS) ** size
    count, check, string = 0, set(), ''
    while LIMIT > count < amount:
        string = ''.join(RND().choices(CHARS, k=size))
        if string not in check:
            check.add(string)
            yield string
            count += 1


for my_count, my_string in enumerate(string_generator(6, 20)):
    print(my_count, my_string)

Output:

0 RS9N3P
1 S0GDGR
2 ZNBLFV
3 96FF97
4 38JJZ3
5 Q3214A
6 VLWNK1
7 QMT05E
8 X1ZFP0
9 MZF442
10 10L9AZ
11 GE8HIQ
12 S7PA43
13 MVLXO9
14 YX7Y0G
15 GIIKPF
16 3KCUQA
17 XHIXFV
18 BJQ5VG
19 HQF01Q

If your string always needs to contain letters and numbers, use this:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from typing import Generator
from random import SystemRandom as RND
from string import ascii_uppercase, digits


def string_generator(size: int = 2, amount: int = 1) -> Generator[str, None, None]:
    """
    Return x random strings of a fixed length.

    :param size: string length, defaults to 1
    :type size: int, optional
    :param amount: amount of random strings to generate, defaults to 1
    :type amount: int, optional
    :yield: Yield composed random string if unique
    :rtype: Generator[str, None, None]
    """
    if size < 2:
        print(
            'Since the string must contain letters and numbers,',
            'its size must be at least two characters',
        )
        return
    CHARS = list(ascii_uppercase + digits)
    LIMIT = len(CHARS) ** size
    count, check, string = 0, set(), ''
    while LIMIT > count < amount:
        while 1:
            string = ''.join(RND().choices(CHARS, k=size))
            if not (string.isalpha() or string.isnumeric()):
                break
        if string not in check:
            check.add(string)
            yield string
            count += 1


for my_count, my_string in enumerate(string_generator(6, 20)):
    print(my_count, my_string)

Output:

0 5JIITL
1 3W7AI1
2 8QMO10
3 ETHAI8
4 BLFPP9
5 50X2CC
6 1LI8WA
7 39CKET
8 R4IM0E
9 Q3KHGS
10 65CBIU
11 XTRHO4
12 N2XIGO
13 06VFCW
14 VE9MJ8
15 A9ADHK
16 Y5ROJ0
17 OH7EJF
18 TQ709S
19 P0DDNJ

I have gone though almost all of the answers but none of them looks easier. I would suggest you to try the passgen library which is generally used to create random passwords.

You can generate random strings of your choice of length, punctuation, digits, letters and case.

Here's the code for your case:

from passgen import passgen
string_length = int(input())
random_string = passgen(length=string_length, punctuation=False, digits=True, letters=True, case='upper')

you can now use a new library (python >= 3.6) chancepy here

from chancepy import Chance

random_string = Chance.string(length=10, pool="someLettersAndNumbers123")