Secrets in

About Secrets

A previous concept discussed the random module, which produces pseudo-random numbers and pseudo-random list orderings.

The secrets module overlaps with random in some of its functionality, but the two modules are designed with very different priorities.

• random is optimized for high performance in modelling and simulation, with "good enough" pseudo-random number generation.
• secrets is designed to be crytographically secure for applications such as password hashing, security token generation, and account authentication.

Further details on why the addition of the secrets module proved necessary are given in PEP 506.

The secrets is relatively small and straightforward, with methods for generating random integers, bits, bytes or tokens, or a random entry from a given sequence.

To use scerets, you mush first import it:

>>> import secrets

#Returns n, where 0 <=  n < 1000.
>>> secrets.randbelow(1000) 
577

#32-bit integers.
>>> secrets.randbits(32) 
3028709440

>>> bin(secrets.randbits(32))
'0b11111000101100101111110011110100'

#Pick at random from a sequence.
>>> secrets.choice(['my', 'secret', 'thing']) 
'thing'

#Generate a token made up of random hexadecimal digits.
>>> secrets.token_hex() 
'f683d093ea9aa1f2607497c837cf11d7afaefa903c5805f94b64f068e2b9e621'

#Generate a URL-safe token of random alphanumeric characters.
>>> secrets.token_urlsafe(16) 
'gkSUKRdiPDHqmImPi2HMnw'

If you are writing security-sensitive applications, you will certainly want to read the full documentation, which gives further advice and examples.