Why I Created a Password Generator CLI Tool

Photo by Paulius Dragunas on Unsplash

Yes it's true, I created my own password generator CLI tool, and published it as an NPM package. It has only ~12kB, easy-to-use and it's open-source.

You can find the package on this link:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@thpadelis/gpass

You can find the source code on this link:
https://github.com/ThPadelis/gpass

Why I did it?

I built gPass because I was finding it way too tiring to visit a website, configure the settings and generate a new one every time I wanted to use a password.

I wanted something to help me with this obstacle and be easy to use for everyone who uses a terminal.

Another reason was that I haven't work on something personal in long days. I felt that the routine was drowning me and I wanted to change it.

As result, I created this small project of mine and published it.

How does it work?

Firstly you need to install the package on your machine.

npm install -g @thpadelis/gpass

After installation, you are ready to use the gpass alias. You can use the gpass -h option to list all the available options.

Examples

Following are some very basic usage examples of the tool.

Create password with length of 15 chars

gpass -l 15
# output
# gV6|yA5&lA1=iV9

Create PIN

gpass -p
# output 
# 5176246270

Create 5 passwords with length of 10 characters and no symbols

gpass -l 10 -n 5 -es
# output
# dY6tA6nM7q
# hK4eB6qE5p
# cD5pM0eJ0l
# cM4bV5uQ6s
# sD3bG1yV2n

Create password and copy it to clipboard

gpass -cp

You can find more examples in the README.md file.

Outcome

At the end of the day, this is just another tool - not the first for sure, not the best but is part of me and my try to contribute to the open-source community.

If you like, please consider dropping a comment, like or even a new feature idea.