Password Generator

Password Generator

The original script was given to us as a lab assignment in WIN213 (Windows PowerShell Scriptng)

My own version of the script can be downloaded from the link below:

BJCairney_passwdgen.ps1


The Problem:
The original Lab instructions came with a txt file containing user names and we were to create an auto-generated password for each username. The students were to then manually copy and paste the names from the text file along with the first round of auto generated passwords into a here string. The script was to be run once more, with the added step of converting the here string into a hash table, displaying the hash table on the screen, and sending everything to a txt file. 

As is evident in the image below, the names and the passwords on the top half of the screen did not match when they were converted to a hash table on the bottom half. The passwords were also different because of the script being run more than once.

I wanted to find a way to have the script generate a list of passwords for each name only once, and convert that information into a hash table. I also wanted to find a way to change the display of the hash table headings to match the values that they were pertaining to. 

The output of the original script is as follows:

The Solution:
I consolidated the steps of creating a here string and generating a password into one step. I created an array to contain the user names and I ran a for loop through the array. I appended the name and password for each user to the here string through each iteration of the loop. I then converted the here string into a hash table with custom labels.

After adding my own code to the assignment, the output is as follows:

I wrote the following script to accomplish this:

 <#
################################################################################
################################################################################
## FileName: Lab8_BJCairney_pswdgen.ps1
## Author: Brian Cairney Date: July 4, 2014   DateLastModified: July 4, 2014
## Purpose:  Creates a randomly generated password for 10 users and stores them
##                   in a txt file.
## Synatx: No special instructions
##############################################################################
##############################################################################
#>

Clear-Host

## Preparation
## In case script has been run once in ISE, check for $Herestring and clear if present
#######################################################################################

$TestForHereString = Test-Path Variable:\HereString

    If($TestForHereString -eq $True){
    Clear-Variable HereString
    }
    
## Exercise 1
## -  Creating Arrays of Character Sets
###############################################################################

$LowerCase1 = @("a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k","l","m","n","o","p","q","r","s","t","u","v","w","x","y","z")
$UpperCase1 = @("A","B","C","D","E","F","G","H","I","J","K","L","M","N","O","P","Q","R","S","T","U","V","W","X","Y","Z")
$Digit = @(1..9)
$Symbol = @("!","@","#","$","%","^","&","*","?","+")
$LowerCase2 = @("a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k","l","m","n","o","p","q","r","s","t","u","v","w","x","y","z")
$UpperCase2 = @("A","B","C","D","E","F","G","H","I","J","K","L","M","N","O","P","Q","R","S","T","U","V","W","X","Y","Z")

## Exercise 2 
## - Generating a Random Password
## AND
## Exercise 3: Challenge –Creating a Hash Table of Username=Password 
#################################################################################

## Part 1
## - Create an array of usernames.
#################################################################################

$Usernames = @("Mike Baker","Mary Martin","Uma Siveram","Uri Demisky","Steven Sullivan","Tom Mills","Gary Parker", `
                                 "Ahmed Mohammad","Rhonda Jinkins","Gord Routley")

## Part 2
## - Create a password for each name using a ForEach loop
#################################################################################

Foreach($Name in $Usernames){

$Password = ($Lowercase1 |Get-Random)
$Password += ($Uppercase1 |Get-Random)
$Password += ($Digit |Get-Random)
$Password += ($Symbol |Get-Random)
$Password += ($LowerCase2 |Get-Random)
$Password += ($UpperCase2 |Get-Random)
$Password += "`n"

## Part 3 
## - Create a here string for converting to a hashtable and append each user/pword
##################################################################################

$HereString += @"
$Name = $Password  
"@
}

## Part 4
## - Convert the here string to a hash table
###################################################################################

$UserNamePasswordHashTable = ConvertFrom-StringData -StringData $HereString

## Part 5
## - Create a custom output format for format-table and pipe The HashTable into 
##   Format-Table, and Output to the file L8_userpasswords.txt
###################################################################################

#Test if file exsists, and if not create it
$PasswordFilePath = "$Home\L8_userpasswords.txt"
$TestPasswordFile = Test-Path $PasswordFilePath
   
        If($TestPasswordFile -eq $False){
        New-Item -Path $PasswordFilePath -ItemType File |Out-Null
        }


$TableLayout = @{Expression={$_.Name};Label="User Name";width = 30},@{Expression={$_.Value};Label="Password"}
$UserNamePasswordHashTable |Format-Table $TableLayout |Out-File $PasswordfilePath 

## Part 6 
## - Send the hash table to the password textfile (Appended)
###################################################################################

$UserNamePasswordHashTable |Out-File $PasswordFilePath -append

## Part 7
## - Display The file contents to the screen 
####################################################################################

Get-Content $PasswordFilePath