Android random string generator

Question

I have a problem. I want to draw a random String something like this aXcFg3s2. What i doing bad ? How change my random()

private String random;
private String charsEntered;
private EditText et;
private Button ok;
CaptchaInterface.OnCorrectListener mCorrectListener;

public void setOnCorrectListener(CaptchaInterface.OnCorrectListener listener) {
    mCorrectListener = listener;
}

public TextCaptcha(Context context) {
    super(context);
    getWindow().requestFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
}

public static String random() {
    Random generator = new Random();
    String x = (String) (generator.nextInt(96) + 32);
    return x;
}

public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
    setContentView(R.layout.main);
    random = random();
    TextView display = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView1);
    display.setText("Random Number: " + random); // Show the random number
    et = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.etNumbers);
    ok = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button1);
    ok.setOnClickListener(this);

}

public void onClick(View arg0) {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    try {
        charsEntered = et.getText().toString();
    } catch (NumberFormatException nfe) {
        Toast.makeText(et.getContext(), "Bla bla bla",
                Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
    }

    if (random == charsEntered) {
        Toast.makeText(et.getContext(), "Good!", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
    } else {
        Toast.makeText(et.getContext(), "Bad!", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
    }
}

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12116092/android-random-string-generator

Answer 1

There are a few things wrong with your code.

You cannot cast from an int to a string. Cast it to a char instead. This however will only give you a single char so instead you could generate a random number for the length of your string. Then run a for loop to generate random chars. You can define a StringBuilder as well and add the chars to that, then get your random string using the toString() method

example:

public static String random() {
    Random generator = new Random();
    StringBuilder randomStringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    int randomLength = generator.nextInt(MAX_LENGTH);
    char tempChar;
    for (int i = 0; i < randomLength; i++){
        tempChar = (char) (generator.nextInt(96) + 32);
        randomStringBuilder.append(tempChar);
    }
    return randomStringBuilder.toString();
}

Also, you should use random.compareTo() rather than ==