Simple Password Generator

This library will generate a password given the options provided. It is a .NET Standard 2.0 library, so it works in both .NET Core and .NET Framework. It has no external dependencies and is light weight.

Click here to visit the NuGet package website.

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🎁 Provided in the repository

Here is a run-down of what the repository contains (at least the code parts):

SimplePasswordGenerator.Example

This is a .NET Core console application, making use of the library as a way to offer a quick showoff.

SimplePasswordGenerator.Test

The library itself is covered by unit tests (xUnit), which are hooked up in the CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions). In other words - no new package release will see the light of the day if any of the unit tests should fail.

SimplePasswordGenerator

This is the actual library itself. It consists of only three files, each representing a class (or enum). I told you it was light-weight!

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🔨 Getting Started

First, install the nuget package. You can check out the package on the NuGet website if you like. To install it, chose your prefered method below:

Visual Studio Package Manager

Install-Package SimplePasswordGenerator -Version 1.2.0

Visual Studio NuGet manager

just search for SimplePasswordGenerator, select it and hit install

.NET CLI

dotnet add package SimplePasswordGenerator --version 1.2.0

PackageReference

<PackageReference Include="SimplePasswordGenerator" Version="1.2.0" />

Paket CLI

paket add SimplePasswordGenerator --version 1.2.0

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🔑 Using the Simple Password Generator

Before generating a password, we need the actual generator. Create the generator object as shown below:

var generator = new Generator();

or, if you prefer to have more control over which characters to be used as seed for the password:

var generator = new Generator(letters: "abc", numerics: "123", specials: "@#?");

💡 Configurating seed later on

It is possible to set the special characters, letters and numerics at a later point (after the generator object has been created). Simply access the adequate field after the Generator has been created and provide a valid string:

var generator = new Generator();
generator.Letters = "ABC";
generator.Numerics = "123";
generator.Specials = "!#@";

NOTE: A blank space is not accepted and will throw a GeneratorException if provided. Also, any duplicate character will be removed. In other words - @@!!@! is equal to @!.

💡 Default password seed

The letters, numerics and specials provided by default (if none are provided in the constructor as shown above) are:

• letters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
• numerics: 1234567890
• specials: !@#$%&=?+*-_

After that, you can generate your password by calling the generators Generate() function like so:

var myPassword = generator.Generate(16);

where 16 is the desired length of your password. Any length beginning with 1 and ending with 1024 is valid. The type returned from Generate() is a simple string.

You can also provide additional parameters when generating passwords. All these parameters are optional. The default value of each follows each listing below:

Parameter	Type	Default value
casing	enum	Casing.Mixed
useSpecials	bool	true
useNumerics	bool	true
filter	string	null (no filter provided)

💡 How filters work

You can chose to filter out specific characters, i.e preventing those characters from ever ending up in the password generated. Simply provide the characters you want to avoid as a string for the filter parameter as shown above.

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🚧 Full blown example

Here is a full example of how to use the generator, with all valid parameters provided for the sake of the demonstration:

public class Program 
{
    static void Main(string[] args) 
    {
        var generator = new Generator(letters: "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ", 
                                      numerics: "1234567890", 
                                      specials: "!@#$%&[]()=?+*-_");

        var myPassword = generator.Generate(passwordLength: 32, 
                                            casing = Casing.Mixed,
                                            useSpecials: true,
                                            useNumerics: true,
                                            filter: "@#?");

        Console.WriteLine($"The password is: {myPassword}");
    }
}

This will print out (at least in this case) the following in the console:

The password is: AwMHK)fzhQqKF*&ymoKu-Uofhp8lY5Ug

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⛔ What if something goes wrong?

If anything goes wrong, the Simple Password Generator will throw a GeneratorException (which is an extension of ApplicationException). That way, you can easily cherry pick exceptions that originates from the generator specifically, without having to parse any exception origin.

Example

try
{
    var generator = new Generator();
    var myPassword = generator.Generate(1025);
    Console.WriteLine($"The password is: {myPassword}");
}
catch (GeneratorException e)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Error: {e.Message}");
    // do what you like
}

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👷 Yet to be implemented

• Accept only alphas in the letters parameter
• Accept only numerics in the numerics parameter
• Make sure the final seed has no duplicates