Random hash in Python

Question

A md5-hash is just a 128-bit value, so if you want a random one:

import random

hash = random.getrandbits(128)

print("hash value: %032x" % hash)

I don't really see the point, though. Maybe you should elaborate why you need this...

I think what you are looking for is a universal unique identifier.Then the module UUID in python is what you are looking for.

import uuid
uuid.uuid4().hex

UUID4 gives you a random unique identifier that has the same length as a md5 sum. Hex will represent is as an hex string instead of returning a uuid object.

http://docs.python.org/2/library/uuid.html

The secrets module was added in Python 3.6+. It provides cryptographically secure random values with a single call. The functions take an optional nbytes argument, default is 32 (bytes * 8 bits = 256-bit tokens). MD5 has 128-bit hashes, so provide 16 for "MD5-like" tokens.

>>> import secrets

>>> secrets.token_hex(nbytes=16)
'17adbcf543e851aa9216acc9d7206b96'

>>> secrets.token_urlsafe(16)
'X7NYIolv893DXLunTzeTIQ'

>>> secrets.token_bytes(128 // 8)
b'\x0b\xdcA\xc0.\x0e\x87\x9b`\x93\\Ev\x1a|u'

This works for both python 2.x and 3.x

import os
import binascii
print(binascii.hexlify(os.urandom(16)))
'4a4d443679ed46f7514ad6dbe3733c3d'

Yet another approach. You won't have to format an int to get it.

import random
import string

def random_string(length):
    pool = string.letters + string.digits
    return ''.join(random.choice(pool) for i in xrange(length))

Gives you flexibility on the length of the string.

>>> random_string(64)
'XTgDkdxHK7seEbNDDUim9gUBFiheRLRgg7HyP18j6BZU5Sa7AXiCHP1NEIxuL2s0'