Re: Generate random password

Robert Fitzpatrick wrote:
> Can anyone suggest how one might be able to do this? I want to be able
> to generate an 8 character random password for users in their password
> field. Perhaps through the default setting of the field or a trigger
> function. I found the following, but is there anything that can be used
> on both Windows and *nix or can this be used on Windows somehow?
>
> http://pgfoundry.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=994
>

Here's a simple function I've used so I can do it in the database.
Written with help from this very list ;-)

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION gen_password() RETURNS text AS $$
DECLARE
password text;
chars text;
BEGIN
password := '';
chars :=
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789';
FOR i IN 1..8 LOOP
password := password || SUBSTRING(chars,
ceil(random()*LENGTH(chars))::integer, 1);
END LOOP;
return password;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Then you can do stuff like:

update people set pp_password = gen_password() where pp_password is null;

Jeff