How to generate short uid like “aX4j9Z” (in JS)

Question

For my web application (in JavaScript) I want to generate short guids (for different objects - that are actually different types - strings and arrays of strings)

I want something like "aX4j9Z" for my uids (guids).

So these uids should be lightweight enough for web transfer and js string processing and quite unique for not a huge structure (not more than 10k elements). By saying "quite unique" I mean that after the generation of the uid I could check whether this uid does already exist in the structure and regenerate it if it does.

Answer 1

You can shorten a GUID to 20 printable ASCII characters without losing information or the uniqueness of the GUID.

Jeff Atwood blogged about that years ago:
Equipping our ASCII Armor

Answer 2

just randomly generate some strings:

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 = {};

Answer 3

This will generate a sequence of unique values. It improves on RobG's answer by growing the string length when all values have been exhaused.

var IdGenerator = (function () {

    var defaultCharset = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890!@#$%^&*()_-+=[]{};:?/.>,<|".split("");

    var IdGenerator = function IdGenerator(charset) {
        this._charset = (typeof charset === "undefined") ? defaultCharset : charset;
        this.reset();
    };

    IdGenerator.prototype._str = function () {
        var str = "",
            perm = this._perm,
            chars = this._charset,
            len = perm.length,
            i;
        for (i = 0; i < len; i++) {
            str += chars[perm[i]];
        }
        return str;
    };

    IdGenerator.prototype._inc = function () {
        var perm = this._perm,
            max = this._charset.length - 1,
            i;
        for (i = 0; true; i++) {
            if (i > perm.length - 1) {
                perm.push(0);
                return;
            } else {
                perm[i]++;
                if (perm[i] > max) {
                    perm[i] = 0;
                } else {
                    return;
                }
            }
        }
    };

    IdGenerator.prototype.reset = function () {
        this._perm = [];
    };

    IdGenerator.prototype.current = function () {
        return this._str();
    };

    IdGenerator.prototype.next = function () {
        this._inc();
        return this._str();
    };

    return IdGenerator;

}).call(null);

Usage:

var g = new IdGenerator(),
    i;

for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
   console.log(g.next());
}

This gist contains the above implementation and a recursive version.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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;
  }
}());

Answer 6

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;
}