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authorPaul Kehrer <paul.l.kehrer@gmail.com>2015-08-08 18:42:14 -0500
committerPaul Kehrer <paul.l.kehrer@gmail.com>2015-08-08 18:42:14 -0500
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Merge pull request #2228 from alex/rand-int
Document how to get a random number as an integer, fixes #2190
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diff --git a/docs/random-numbers.rst b/docs/random-numbers.rst
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--- a/docs/random-numbers.rst
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@@ -21,4 +21,12 @@ you can obtain them with:
This will use ``/dev/urandom`` on UNIX platforms, and ``CryptGenRandom`` on
Windows.
+If you need your random number as an integer (for example, for
+:meth:`~cryptography.x509.CertificateBuilder.serial_number`), you can use
+``int.from_bytes`` to convert the result of ``os.urandom``:
+
+.. code-block:: pycon
+
+ >>> serial = int.from_bytes(os.urandom(20), byteorder="big")
+
.. _`always use your operating system's provided random number generator`: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2014/02/25/safely-generate-random-numbers/