The need to generate a globally unique identifier comes up often.
The way described in RFC 4122 is popular but it can be done better.
I wrote betterguid Go package that does it better.
Unique id generated by this package:
- is a 20 character string, safe to include in urls (no need for escaping)
- consist of 8 bytes of timestamp (millisecond precision) and 9 bytes of random data
- sorts lexicographically
- 72-bits of random data ensures IDs won’t collide with IDs generated by other clients
- are monotonically increasing even within the same timestamp
You can read a longer description of the algorithm.
My implementation is based on this JavaScript code.
Related: comparison of 7 Go libraries for unique id generation.
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