function getUID(len){
var chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789',
out = '';
for(var i=0, clen=chars.length; i<len; i++){
out += chars.substr(0|Math.random() * clen, 1);
}
// ensure that the uid is unique for this page
return getUID.uids[out] ? getUID(len) : (getUID.uids[out] = out);
}
getUID.uids = {};
See @Mohamed's answer for a pre-packaged solution (the shortid package). Prefer that instead of any other solutions on this page if you don't have special requirements.
A 6-character alphanumeric sequence is pretty enough to randomly index a 10k collection (366 = 2.2 billion and 363 = 46656).
function generateUID() {
// I generate the UID from two parts here
// to ensure the random number provide enough bits.
var firstPart = (Math.random() * 46656) | 0;
var secondPart = (Math.random() * 46656) | 0;
firstPart = ("000" + firstPart.toString(36)).slice(-3);
secondPart = ("000" + secondPart.toString(36)).slice(-3);
return firstPart + secondPart;
}
UIDs generated randomly will have collision after generating ~ √N numbers (birthday paradox), thus 6 digits are needed for safe generation without checking (the old version only generates 4 digits which would have a collision after 1300 IDs if you don't check).
If you do collision checking, the number of digits can be reduced 3 or 4, but note that the performance will reduce linearly when you generate more and more UIDs.
var _generatedUIDs = {};
function generateUIDWithCollisionChecking() {
while (true) {
var uid = ("0000" + ((Math.random() * Math.pow(36, 4)) | 0).toString(36)).slice(-4);
if (!_generatedUIDs.hasOwnProperty(uid)) {
_generatedUIDs[uid] = true;
return uid;
}
}
}
Consider using a sequential generator (e.g. user134_item1, user134_item2, …) if you require uniqueness and not unpredictability. You could "Hash" the sequentially generated string to recover unpredictability.
UIDs generated using Math.random is not secure (and you shouldn't trust the client anyway). Do not rely on its uniqueness or unpredictability in mission critical tasks.
var letters = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
var numbers = '1234567890';
var charset = letters + letters.toUpperCase() + numbers;
function randomElement(array) {
with (Math)
return array[floor(random()*array.length)];
}
function randomString(length) {
var R = '';
for(var i=0; i<length; i++)
R += randomElement(charset);
return R;
}
The following generates 62^3 (238,328) unique values of 3 characters provided case sensitivity is unique and digits are allowed in all positions. If case insensitivity is required, remove either upper or lower case characters from chars string and it will generate 35^3 (42,875) unique values.
Can be easily adapted so that first char is always a letter, or all letters.
No dobut it can be optimised, and could also refuse to return an id when the limit is reached.
var nextId = (function() {
var nextIndex = [0,0,0];
var chars = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'.split('');
var num = chars.length;
return function() {
var a = nextIndex[0];
var b = nextIndex[1];
var c = nextIndex[2];
var id = chars[a] + chars[b] + chars[c];
a = ++a % num;
if (!a) {
b = ++b % num;
if (!b) {
c = ++c % num;
}
}
nextIndex = [a, b, c];
return id;
}
}());
shortid has been deprecated in favor of nanoid which is smaller and faster:
Small. 108 bytes (minified and gzipped). No dependencies. Size Limit controls the size.
Fast. It is 40% faster than UUID.
Safe. It uses cryptographically strong random APIs. Can be used in clusters.
Compact. It uses a larger alphabet than UUID (A-Za-z0-9_-). So ID size was reduced from 36 to 21 symbols.
Portable. Nano ID was ported to 14 programming languages.
import { nanoid } from 'nanoid'
// 21 characters (default)
// ~149 billion years needed, in order to have a 1% probability of at least one collision.
console.log(nanoid()) //=> "V1StGXR8_Z5jdHi6B-myT"
// 11 characters
// ~139 years needed, in order to have a 1% probability of at least one collision.
console.log(nanoid(11)) //=> "bdkjNOkq9PO"
There is also an awesome npm package for this : shortid
Amazingly short non-sequential url-friendly unique id generator.
ShortId creates amazingly short non-sequential url-friendly unique ids. Perfect for url shorteners, MongoDB and Redis ids, and any other id users might see.
By default 7-14 url-friendly characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _-
This solution combines Math.random() with a counter.
Math.random() should give about 53 bits of entropy (compared with UUIDv4's 128), but when combined with a counter should give plenty enough uniqueness for a temporary ID.
This is an old question and there are some good answers, however I notice that we are in 2022 and we can use ES6 and if you don't like to depend on 3rd party libs. Here is a solution for you.
I implemented a very simple generator using the build-in functions that JavaScript offers to us these days. We will use Crypto.getRandomValues() and Uint8Array() so check the code below
This implementation uses these characters: [A-Z], [a-z], [0-9] this in total are 62 characters if we add _ and - it will complete 64 characters like this: