Secure random token in Node.js

Question

In this question Erik needs to generate a secure random token in Node.js. There\'s the method crypto.randomBytes that generates a random Buffer. However, the ba

Answer 1

0. Using nanoid third party library [NEW!]

A tiny, secure, URL-friendly, unique string ID generator for JavaScript

https://github.com/ai/nanoid

import { nanoid } from "nanoid";
const id = nanoid(48);

1. Base 64 Encoding with URL and Filename Safe Alphabet

Page 7 of RCF 4648 describes how to encode in base 64 with URL safety. You can use an existing library like base64url to do the job.

The function will be:

var crypto = require('crypto');
var base64url = require('base64url');

/** Sync */
function randomStringAsBase64Url(size) {
  return base64url(crypto.randomBytes(size));
}

Usage example:

randomStringAsBase64Url(20);
// Returns 'AXSGpLVjne_f7w5Xg-fWdoBwbfs' which is 27 characters length.

Note that the returned string length will not match with the size argument (size != final length).

2. Crypto random values from limited set of characters

Beware that with this solution the generated random string is not uniformly distributed.

You can also build a strong random string from a limited set of characters like that:

var crypto = require('crypto');

/** Sync */
function randomString(length, chars) {
  if (!chars) {
    throw new Error('Argument \'chars\' is undefined');
  }

  var charsLength = chars.length;
  if (charsLength > 256) {
    throw new Error('Argument \'chars\' should not have more than 256 characters'
      + ', otherwise unpredictability will be broken');
  }

  var randomBytes = crypto.randomBytes(length);
  var result = new Array(length);

  var cursor = 0;
  for (var i = 0; i < length; i++) {
    cursor += randomBytes[i];
    result[i] = chars[cursor % charsLength];
  }

  return result.join('');
}

/** Sync */
function randomAsciiString(length) {
  return randomString(length,
    'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789');
}

Usage example:

randomAsciiString(20);
// Returns 'rmRptK5niTSey7NlDk5y' which is 20 characters length.

randomString(20, 'ABCDEFG');
// Returns 'CCBAAGDGBBEGBDBECDCE' which is 20 characters length.