Create a Lottery Generator

Solution 1 : Using Random

This solution a class is created with Random Initialised when the class is instanciated. If random is not declared outside the method then it will return the same 6 numbers every time you call the method. This is a common gotcha when using Random.

The LottoNumbers method returns a string with six numbers comma separated. The Dump method is used in LINQPad to output the results.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;


void Main()
{
	var lotto = new LottoGenerator();
	var candidates = lotto.LottoNumbers();
	Console.WriteLine(candidates);
}

public class LottoGenerator
{
	private Random _random = new Random();

	public string LottoNumbers()
	{
		var numbers = new List<int>();
		for (var i = 0 ; i<6; i++)
		{
			numbers.Add(_random.Next(1,60));
		}
		return string.Join(", ",numbers.Select(x=> x.ToString()));
	}
}

Solution 2 : Using Enumerable.Range() and Guid.NewGuid()

This solution is much more elegant and simpler to use.

• Enumerable.Range(1,60) creates a list of integers from 1 to 60
• OrderBy Guid.NewGuid() generates a new random order each time
• String.Join returns the list flattened out into a comma separated string.

void Main()
{
	var numbers = GenerateLottoNumbers();
	Console.WriteLine(numbers);
}

string GenerateLottoNumbers()
{
	var numbers = Enumerable.Range(1, 60)
						   .Select(c => c)
						   .OrderBy(o => Guid.NewGuid())
						   .Take(6);
	return string.Join(", ", numbers);
}

Output

The output of three runs is as follows

• 59, 8, 40, 13, 58, 32
• 26, 7, 29, 59, 36, 38
• 31, 60, 56, 48, 44, 29