Setting up wireless networking with NixOS

To enable a wireless connection with no spaces or special characters in the name that uses a pre-share key, you first need to generate the raw PSK:

wpa_passphrase exampleSSID examplePassword
network={
    ssid="exampleSSID"
    #psk="examplePassword"
    psk=46c25aa68ccb90945621c1f1adbe93683f884f5f31c6e2d524eb6b446642762d
}

Now you can add the following stanza to your configuration.nix to enable wireless networking and this specific wireless connection:

networking.wireless = {
  enable = true;
  userControlled.enable = true;
  networks = {
    exampleSSID = {
      pskRaw = "46c25aa68ccb90945621c1f1adbe93683f884f5f31c6e2d524eb6b446642762d";
    };
  };
};

If you had another WiFi connection that had spaces and/or special characters in the name, you would configure it like this:

networking.wireless = {
  enable = true;
  userControlled.enable = true;
  networks = {
    "example's SSID" = {
      pskRaw = "46c25aa68ccb90945621c1f1adbe93683f884f5f31c6e2d524eb6b446642762d";
    };
  };
};

If you need to connect to a hidden network, you would do it like this:

networking.wireless = {
  enable = true;
  userControlled.enable = true;
  networks = {
    myHiddenSSID = {
      hidden = true;
      pskRaw = "46c25aa68ccb90945621c1f1adbe93683f884f5f31c6e2d524eb6b446642762d";
    };
  };
};

The final scenario that I have, is connecting to open SSIDs that have some kind of secondary method (like a login in web page) for authentication of connections:

networking.wireless = {
  enable = true;
  userControlled.enable = true;
  networks = {
    FreeWiFi = {};
  };
};

Tutorial copied from mcwhirther.com.au