Something that I found that I frequently come across is the need to generate a random string, so I ended up creating a simple shared function that dealt with that for me.
Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic
Public Class PasswordFunctions
''' <summary>
''' This function generates a random password allowing for the specification of the contents
''' </summary>
''' <param name="passwordLength">The number of characters to be in the password</param>
''' <param name="includeUpperCase">Whether to include upper case characters</param>
''' <param name="includeNumbers">Whether to include numbers</param>
''' <param name="includeSymbols">Whether to include symbols</param>
''' <param name="includeSimilarChars">Whether to include characters which are similar</param>
''' <returns>A string with the random password</returns>
''' <remarks>This method was produced by Satal Keto (www.satalketo.com)</remarks>
Public Shared Function generatePassword(Optional ByVal passwordLength As Integer = 12, _
Optional ByVal includeUpperCase As Boolean = False, _
Optional ByVal includeNumbers As Boolean = False, _
Optional ByVal includeSymbols As Boolean = False, _
Optional ByVal includeSimilarChars As Boolean = False) As String
Dim strRtn As String = ""
Dim strAllowedChars As String
Dim intCount As Integer
Dim rnd As New Random()
strAllowedChars = "abcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz"
If includeUpperCase Then
strAllowedChars &= "ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ"
If includeSimilarChars Then
strAllowedChars &= "IO"
End If
End If
If includeNumbers Then
strAllowedChars &= "23456789"
If includeSimilarChars Then
strAllowedChars &= "10"
End If
End If
If includeSymbols Then
strAllowedChars &= "|$%^&*()_+~-=#[]{};':@,./<>?"
If includeSimilarChars Then
strAllowedChars &= "!"
End If
End If
For intCount = 0 To passwordLength
strRtn &= strAllowedChars.Substring(rnd.Next(0, strAllowedChars.Length - 1), 1)
Next
Return strRtn
End Function
End Class
