Create GUID / UUID in JavaScript?

Question

I'm trying to create globally-unique identifiers in JavaScript. I'm not sure what routines are available on all browsers, how "random" and seeded the built-in random number generator is, etc..

The GUID / UUID should be at least 32 characters and should stay in the ASCII range to avoid trouble when passing them around.

Answer 1

Fastest GUID like string generator method in the format XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX. This does not generate standard-compliant GUID.

Ten million executions of this implementation take just 32.5 seconds, which is the fastest I've ever seen in a browser (the only solution without loops/iterations).

The function is as simple as:

/**
 * Generates a GUID string.
 * @returns {String} The generated GUID.
 * @example af8a8416-6e18-a307-bd9c-f2c947bbb3aa
 * @author Slavik Meltser ([e-mail]).
 * @link http://slavik.meltser.info/?p=142
 */
function guid() {
    function _p8(s) {
        var p = (Math.random().toString(16)+"000000000").substr(2,8);
        return s ? "-" + p.substr(0,4) + "-" + p.substr(4,4) : p ;
    }
    return _p8() + _p8(true) + _p8(true) + _p8();
}

To test the performance, you can run this code:

console.time('t'); 
for (var i = 0; i < 10000000; i++) { 
    guid(); 
};
console.timeEnd('t');

I'm sure most of you will understand what I did there, but maybe there is at least one person that will need an explanation:

The algorithm:

• The Math.random() function returns a decimal number between 0 and 1 with 16 digits after the decimal fraction point (for example 0.4363923368509859).
• Then we take this number and convert it to a string with base 16 (from the example above we'll get 0.6fb7687f).
  Math.random().toString(16).
• Then we cut off the 0. prefix (0.6fb7687f => 6fb7687f) and get a string with eight hexadecimal characters long.
  (Math.random().toString(16).substr(2,8).
• Sometimes the Math.random() function will return shorter number (for example 0.4363), due to zeros at the end (from the example above, actually the number is 0.4363000000000000). That's why I'm appending to this string "000000000" (a string with nine zeros) and then cutting it off with substr() function to make it nine characters exactly (filling zeros to the right).
• The reason for adding exactly nine zeros is because of the worse case scenario, which is when the Math.random() function will return exactly 0 or 1 (probability of 1/10^16 for each one of them). That's why we needed to add nine zeros to it ("0"+"000000000" or "1"+"000000000"), and then cutting it off from the second index (3rd character) with a length of eight characters. For the rest of the cases, the addition of zeros will not harm the result because it is cutting it off anyway.
  Math.random().toString(16)+"000000000").substr(2,8).

The assembly:

• The GUID is in the following format XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX.
• I divided the GUID into 4 pieces, each piece divided into 2 types (or formats): XXXXXXXX and -XXXX-XXXX.
• Now I'm building the GUID using these 2 types to assemble the GUID with call 4 pieces, as follows: XXXXXXXX -XXXX-XXXX -XXXX-XXXX XXXXXXXX.
• To differ between these two types, I added a flag parameter to a pair creator function _p8(s), the s parameter tells the function whether to add dashes or not.
• Eventually we build the GUID with the following chaining: _p8() + _p8(true) + _p8(true) + _p8(), and return it.

Link to this post on my blog

Enjoy! :-)

Answer 2

From sagi shkedy's technical blog:

function generateGuid() {
  var result, i, j;
  result = '';
  for(j=0; j<32; j++) {
    if( j == 8 || j == 12 || j == 16 || j == 20) 
      result = result + '-';
    i = Math.floor(Math.random()*16).toString(16).toUpperCase();
    result = result + i;
  }
  return result;
}

There are other methods that involve using an ActiveX control, but stay away from these!

Edit : I thought it was worth pointing out that no GUID generator can guarantee unique keys (check the wikipedia article). There is always a chance of collisions. A GUID simply offers a large enough universe of keys to reduce the change of collisions to almost nil.

Answer 3

This one is based on date, and add a random suffix to "ensure" uniqueness. Works well for css identifiers. It always returns something like and is easy to hack:

uid-139410573297741

var getUniqueId = function (prefix) {
            var d = new Date().getTime();
            d += (parseInt(Math.random() * 100)).toString();
            if (undefined === prefix) {
                prefix = 'uid-';
            }
            d = prefix + d;
            return d;
        };

Answer 4

For an RFC4122 version 4 compliant solution, this one-liner(ish) solution is the most compact I could come up with.:

function uuidv4() {
  return 'xxxxxxxx-xxxx-4xxx-yxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx'.replace(/[xy]/g, function(c) {
    var r = Math.random() * 16 | 0, v = c == 'x' ? r : (r & 0x3 | 0x8);
    return v.toString(16);
  });
}

console.log(uuidv4())

Update, 2015-06-02: Be aware that UUID uniqueness relies heavily on the underlying random number generator (RNG). The solution above uses Math.random() for brevity, however Math.random() is not guaranteed to be a high-quality RNG. See Adam Hyland's excellent writeup on Math.random() for details. For a more robust solution, consider something like the uuid module[Disclaimer: I'm the author], which uses higher quality RNG APIs where available.

Update, 2015-08-26: As a side-note, this gist describes how to determine how many IDs can be generated before reaching a certain probability of collision. For example, with 3.26x10¹⁵ version 4 RFC4122 UUIDs you have a 1-in-a-million chance of collision.

Update, 2017-06-28: A good article from Chrome developers discussing the state of Math.random PRNG quality in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. tl;dr - As of late-2015 it's "pretty good", but not cryptographic quality. To address that issue, here's an updated version of the above solution that uses ES6, the crypto API, and a bit of JS wizardy I can't take credit for:

function uuidv4() {
  return ([1e7]+-1e3+-4e3+-8e3+-1e11).replace(/[018]/g, c =>
    (c ^ crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint8Array(1))[0] & 15 >> c / 4).toString(16)
  )
}

console.log(uuidv4());

Answer 5

JavaScript project on GitHub - https://github.com/LiosK/UUID.js

UUID.js The RFC-compliant UUID generator for JavaScript.

See RFC 4122 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4122.txt.

Features Generates RFC 4122 compliant UUIDs.

Version 4 UUIDs (UUIDs from random numbers) and version 1 UUIDs (time-based UUIDs) are available.

UUID object allows a variety of access to the UUID including access to the UUID fields.

Low timestamp resolution of JavaScript is compensated by random numbers.

Answer 6

Adjusted my own UUID/GUID generator with some extras here.

I'm using the following Kybos random number generator to be a bit more cryptographically sound.

Below is my script with the Mash and Kybos methods from baagoe.com excluded.

//UUID/Guid Generator
// use: UUID.create() or UUID.createSequential()
// convenience:  UUID.empty, UUID.tryParse(string)
(function(w){
  // From http://baagoe.com/en/RandomMusings/javascript/
  // Johannes Baagøe <[e-mail]>, 2010
  //function Mash() {...};

  // From http://baagoe.com/en/RandomMusings/javascript/
  //function Kybos() {...};

  var rnd = Kybos();

  //UUID/GUID Implementation from http://frugalcoder.us/post/2012/01/13/javascript-guid-uuid-generator.aspx
  var UUID = {
    "empty": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
    ,"parse": function(input) {
      var ret = input.toString().trim().toLowerCase().replace(/^[\s\r\n]+|[\{\}]|[\s\r\n]+$/g, "");
      if ((/[a-f0-9]{8}\-[a-f0-9]{4}\-[a-f0-9]{4}\-[a-f0-9]{4}\-[a-f0-9]{12}/).test(ret))
        return ret;
      else
        throw new Error("Unable to parse UUID");
    }
    ,"createSequential": function() {
      var ret = new Date().valueOf().toString(16).replace("-","")
      for (;ret.length < 12; ret = "0" + ret);
      ret = ret.substr(ret.length-12,12); //only least significant part
      for (;ret.length < 32;ret += Math.floor(rnd() * 0xffffffff).toString(16));
      return [ret.substr(0,8), ret.substr(8,4), "4" + ret.substr(12,3), "89AB"[Math.floor(Math.random()*4)] + ret.substr(16,3),  ret.substr(20,12)].join("-");
    }
    ,"create": function() {
      var ret = "";
      for (;ret.length < 32;ret += Math.floor(rnd() * 0xffffffff).toString(16));
      return [ret.substr(0,8), ret.substr(8,4), "4" + ret.substr(12,3), "89AB"[Math.floor(Math.random()*4)] + ret.substr(16,3),  ret.substr(20,12)].join("-");
    }
    ,"random": function() {
      return rnd();
    }
    ,"tryParse": function(input) {
      try {
        return UUID.parse(input);
      } catch(ex) {
        return UUID.empty;
      }
    }
  };
  UUID["new"] = UUID.create;

  w.UUID = w.Guid = UUID;
}(window || this));