How to change Drupal user password programmatically?

We are going to deploy a Drupal site inside company's intranet. There is a requirement for user to reset password. We have a centralized password reset mechanism (for single sign on):

- user submits a password change request in system
- the request is sent to a password server
- the password server will reset the user's password in _all systems_ with a new password
- the password server will send the new password to user's mobile phone via sms

Now we are going to add the Drupal site to _all systems_. Please suggest a way to change the Drupal's logon password by an external program (assume the system can run script on the Drupal host and edit Drupal MySQL database).

If you're using Drupal 6 then the password stored in the system is a simple md5 of the password. If you're using php scripts to trigger the password reset then use the

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function.

Username and Password is stored in the `users` table. The md5 hash is stored in the `pass` column.

For Drupal 7 -- Hope this custom function code resolves **change** password for *anonymous* user.

function password_reset(){
global $user;
$hashthepass = 'password'; /* Your password value*/
require_once DRUPAL_ROOT . '/' . variable_get('password_inc', 'includes/password.inc');
$hashthepass = user_hash_password(trim($hashthepass));
// Abort if the hashing failed and returned FALSE.
if (!$hashthepass) {
return FALSE;
}
else {
db_update('users')
->fields(array(
'pass' => $hashthepass
))
->condition('uid', $user->uid)
->execute();
}
}

Another possibility for Drupal 7 is:

$user = user_load($GLOBALS['user']->uid);
$user->pass = 'the new password';
user_save((object) array('uid' => $user->uid), (array) $user);

This will automatically hash the password, without the need to write directly to the database.

Here is another more sophisticated Drupal 7 approach based on the given `$username`. It also supports e-mail addresses used as username.

$users = user_load_multiple(array(), array('mail' => $username, 'status' => '1'));
$account = reset($users);
if (!$account) {
// No success, try to load by name.
$users = user_load_multiple(array(), array('name' => $username, 'status' => '1'));
$account = reset($users);
}

if ($account) {
$account->pass = 'new password';
user_save($account);
}
else {
watchdog('user', 'Cannot load user: %user', array('%user' => $username), array(), WATCHDOG_ERROR);
}



[1]:

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There are already many nice answers in here, but I believe I add the one which I found easy for me.

// ID of the user whose password you wish to change.
$uid = 1;

// Load the user account.
$account = user_load($uid);

// Load hashing libraries.
// You can use module_load_include() if you want to make it cleaner.
require_once DRUPAL_ROOT . '/' . variable_get('password_inc', 'includes/password.inc');

// Generate new password hash.
$password_hash = user_hash_password('enter-new-password-here');
if (!$password_hash) {
// Password could not be hashed. Handle the error.
exit('Password could not be hashed.');
}

$account->pass = $password_hash;
user_save($account);

Given everything is set up correctly, your user's password would be updated.

**Note:** If you have forgotten your root password, you can safely ignore the error handling, etc. Add these lines in *index.php* before *menu_execute_active_handler();* and open any page to reset your password. Don't forget to remove the lines after you're done though!