Generate a Unique String in Python/Django

From 3.6 You can use secrets module to generate nice random strings. https://docs.python.org/3/library/secrets.html#module-secrets

import secrets
print(secrets.token_hex(5))

My favourite is

import uuid 
uuid.uuid4().hex[:6].upper()

If you using django you can set the unique constrain on this field in order to make sure it is unique. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/fields/#django.db.models.Field.unique

Am not sure about any short cryptic ways, but it can be implemented using a simple straight forward function assuming that you save all the generated strings in a set:

import random

def generate(unique):
    chars = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890"
    while True:
        value = "".join(random.choice(chars) for _ in range(5))
        if value not in unique:
            unique.add(value)
            break

unique = set()
for _ in range(10):
    generate(unique)

A more secure and shorter way of doing is using Django's crypto module.

from django.utils.crypto import get_random_string
code = get_random_string(5)

get_random_string() function returns a securely generated random string, uses secrets module under the hood.

You can also pass allowed_chars:

from django.utils.crypto import get_random_string
import string

code = get_random_string(5, allowed_chars=string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits)