Simple way to generate random string in PHP

While developing an application, sometimes it requires generating a random but unique string, e.g. Password Generator, CSRF token, and many more.

There are so many methods to generate random and unique strings in PHP. For Example:

rand();
uniqid();
bin2hex(random_bytes(20));

But I prefer my way to generate a random string by using existing PHP functions and bit improvisation.
Here is the function:

function random_seed(){
  list($usec, $sec) = explode(' ', microtime());
  return $sec + $usec * 1000000;
}

function getRadomSeed(){
    mt_srand(random_seed());
    $prefix = substr(str_shuffle(str_repeat($x='abcNOPQRSTUVWXYZdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLM', ceil(5/strlen($x)) )),1,5);
    $suffix = substr(str_shuffle(str_repeat($x='wxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvPQRSTUVWXYZ', ceil(5/strlen($x)) )),1,5);
    $randval = mt_rand();
    if(strlen($randval) % 2 == 0){
        $random = $prefix.$randval.$suffix;
    }else if(strlen($randval) % 3 == 0){
        $random = $prefix.$suffix.$randval;
    }
    else{
        $random = $randval.$prefix.$suffix;
    }
    return $random;
}

Execute:

$rd = getRadomSeed();
echo $rd;

Just to be sure that this is not the only way to generate random strings in PHP. I am just sharing one of my ways to generate random strings.
Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃

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Simple way to generate random string in PHP

Deepak Singh

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