How can I generate random alphanumeric strings?

Question

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

Answer 1

Here is a mechanism to generate a random alpha-numeric string (I use this to generate passwords and test data) without defining the alphabet and numbers,

CleanupBase64 will remove necessary parts in the string and keep adding random alpha-numeric letters recursively.

        public static string GenerateRandomString(int length)
        {
            var numArray = new byte[length];
            new RNGCryptoServiceProvider().GetBytes(numArray);
            return CleanUpBase64String(Convert.ToBase64String(numArray), length);
        }

        private static string CleanUpBase64String(string input, int maxLength)
        {
            input = input.Replace("-", "");
            input = input.Replace("=", "");
            input = input.Replace("/", "");
            input = input.Replace("+", "");
            input = input.Replace(" ", "");
            while (input.Length < maxLength)
                input = input + GenerateRandomString(maxLength);
            return input.Length <= maxLength ?
                input.ToUpper() : //In my case I want capital letters
                input.ToUpper().Substring(0, maxLength);
        }