How can I generate random alphanumeric strings?

Question

How can I generate a random 8 character alphanumeric string in C#?

Answer 1

I was looking for a more specific answer, where I want to control the format of the random string and came across this post. For example: license plates (of cars) have a specific format (per country) and I wanted to created random license plates.
I decided to write my own extension method of Random for this. (this is in order to reuse the same Random object, as you could have doubles in multi-threading scenarios). I created a gist (https://gist.github.com/SamVanhoutte/808845ca78b9c041e928), but will also copy the extension class here:

void Main()
{
    Random rnd = new Random();
    rnd.GetString("1-###-000").Dump();
}

public static class RandomExtensions
{
    public static string GetString(this Random random, string format)
    {
        // Based on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1344221/how-can-i-generate-random-alphanumeric-strings-in-c
        // Added logic to specify the format of the random string (# will be random string, 0 will be random numeric, other characters remain)
        StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
        for(int formatIndex = 0; formatIndex < format.Length ; formatIndex++)
        {
            switch(format.ToUpper()[formatIndex])
            {
                case '0': result.Append(getRandomNumeric(random)); break;
                case '#': result.Append(getRandomCharacter(random)); break;
                default : result.Append(format[formatIndex]); break;
            }
        }
        return result.ToString();
    }

    private static char getRandomCharacter(Random random)
    {
        string chars = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
        return chars[random.Next(chars.Length)];
    }

    private static char getRandomNumeric(Random random)
    {
        string nums = "0123456789";
        return nums[random.Next(nums.Length)];
    }
}