paragonie/random_compat

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

8154 stars · 153 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

A PHP 5.x polyfill providing the random_bytes() and random_int() CSPRNG functions that were introduced in PHP 7. It fails with an exception rather than falling back to insecure randomness, making it secure-by-default.

Use cases

• generate cryptographically secure random bytes in php 5
• polyfill random_int for older php versions
• secure random token generation in legacy php apps
• support php 5 in a library that uses php 7 random functions
• avoid insecure mt_rand for randomness

When to choose

• you maintain a library or app that must support PHP 5.x and needs CSPRNG randomness
• you want a drop-in polyfill that never falls back to insecure random data

When to avoid

• you are on PHP 7 or newer, where random_bytes() and random_int() are built in
• you need general-purpose randomness rather than cryptographic randomness

Facets

library · maturity maintenance

cryptography security sdk security developer-tools programming-languages php polyfill csprng random-bytes random-int php5 secure-by-default

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="paragonie/random_compat")