Random password generator component for CakePHP

11 Jun 2008

This is a component I put together for CakePHP 1.2 RC1 that will generate a random password. All you have to pass it is the length of the password.

To use it, make this file app/controllers/components/password_helper.php

You can use it in a controller by adding ‘PasswordHelper’ to the $components array.

You can adjust the $possible set with your desired characters.

Here is the code:

<?php
class PasswordHelperComponent extends Object {
 
/**
 * Password generator function
 *
 * This function will randomly generate a password from a given set of characters
 *
 * @param int = 8, length of the password you want to generate
 * @return string, the password
 */    
    function generatePassword ($length = 8)
    {
        // initialize variables
        $password = "";
        $i = 0;
        $possible = "0123456789bcdfghjkmnpqrstvwxyz"; 
 
        // add random characters to $password until $length is reached
        while ($i < $length) {
            // pick a random character from the possible ones
            $char = substr($possible, mt_rand(0, strlen($possible)-1), 1);
 
            // we don't want this character if it's already in the password
            if (!strstr($password, $char)) { 
                $password .= $char;
                $i++;
            }
        }
        return $password;
    }
}
?>