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nanoid
Advanced tools
Package description
The nanoid npm package is a small, secure, URL-friendly, unique string ID generator for JavaScript applications. It is designed to be fast and efficient, producing random or custom ID strings suitable for a variety of applications, including database keys, session identifiers, and more.
Simple ID Generation
Generate a unique, URL-friendly ID. The default ID length is 21 characters, which provides a good balance of speed and uniqueness.
const { nanoid } = require('nanoid');
console.log(nanoid()); // Example output: 'V1StGXR8_Z5jdHi6B-myT'
Custom Length ID Generation
Generate a unique ID with a custom length. This allows for shorter or longer IDs depending on the level of uniqueness required.
const { nanoid } = require('nanoid');
console.log(nanoid(10)); // Example output: 'IRFa-VaY2b'
Non-secure ID Generation
Generate a non-secure ID with a custom alphabet and length. This is useful for cases where unique IDs are needed without the cryptographic strength.
const { customAlphabet } = require('nanoid');
const nanoid = customAlphabet('1234567890abcdef', 10);
console.log(nanoid()); // Example output: '4f90d13a42'
Custom Alphabet ID Generation
Generate a unique ID using a custom alphabet. This is useful when you need to avoid certain characters or use a specific set of characters for IDs.
const { customAlphabet } = require('nanoid');
const alphabet = '0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
const nanoid = customAlphabet(alphabet, 10);
console.log(nanoid()); // Example output: '4f90d13a42'
The uuid package can generate RFC-compliant UUIDs. It offers different versions of UUIDs, such as v1 (timestamp-based), v4 (random), and others. Compared to nanoid, uuid provides more standardized and structured IDs, but they are not as compact as nanoid's IDs.
Shortid is another package for generating short non-sequential url-friendly unique ids. However, it is no longer recommended for use as it has been deprecated in favor of nanoid, which is more secure and maintains a smaller size.
Uniqid is a package that generates unique IDs based on the current time and an optional prefix or suffix. It is less feature-rich compared to nanoid and does not provide the same level of customization or security.
Changelog
1.0.1
nanoid/index
size (by Anton Khlynovskiy).Readme
A tiny, secure, URL-friendly, unique string ID generator for JavaScript.
var nanoid = require('nanoid')
model.id = nanoid() //=> "Uakgb_J5m9g~0JDMbcJqLJ"
Safe. It uses cryptographically strong random APIs and guarantees a proper distribution of symbols.
Small. Only 179 bytes (minified and gzipped). No dependencies. It uses Size Limit to control size.
Compact. It uses a larger alphabet than UUID (A-Za-z0-9_~
)
and has a similar number of unique IDs in just 21 symbols instead of 36.
The generator supports Node.js and all browsers starting from IE 11.
See a good article about random generators theory: Secure random values (in Node.js)
Instead of using the unsafe Math.random()
, Nano ID uses the crypto
module
in Node.js and the Web Crypto API in browsers.
random % alphabet
is a popular mistake to make when coding an ID generator.
The spread will not be even; there will be a lower chance for some symbols
to appear compared to others—so it will reduce the number of tries
when brute-forcing.
Nano ID uses a better algorithm and is tested for uniformity:
Nano ID is quite comparable to UUID v4 (random-based). It has a similar number of random bits in the ID (126 in Nano ID and 122 in UUID), so it has a similar collision probability:
For there to be a one in a billion chance of duplication, 103 trillion version 4 IDs must be generated.
There are two main differences between Nano ID and UUID v4:
uuid/v4
package:
179 bytes instead of 435.$ ./benchmark
nanoid 375,840 ops/sec
nanoid/generate 268,747 ops/sec
uuid/v4 374,767 ops/sec
shortid 41,260 ops/sec
The main module uses URL-friendly symbols (A-Za-z0-9_~
) and returns an ID
with 21 characters (to have a collision probability similar to UUID v4).
var nanoid = require('nanoid')
model.id = nanoid() //=> "Uakgb_J5m9g~0JDMbcJqLJ"
Symbols -,.()
are not encoded in the URL. If used at the end of a link
they could be identified as a punctuation symbol.
If you want to reduce ID length (and increase collisions probability), you can pass the length as an argument:
nanoid(10) //=> "IRFa~VaY2b"
If you want to change the ID's alphabet or length
you can use the low-level generate
module.
var generate = require('nanoid/generate')
model.id = generate('1234567890abcdef', 10) //=> "4f90d13a42"
Alphabet must contain 256 symbols or less. Otherwise, the generator will not be secure.
You can replace the default safe random generator using the format
module.
For instance, to use a seed-based generator.
var format = require('nanoid/format')
function random (size) {
var result = []
for (var i = 0; i < size; i++) result.push(randomByte())
return result
}
format(random, "abcdef", 10) //=> "fbaefaadeb"
random
callback must accept the array size and return an array
with random numbers.
If you want to use the same URL-friendly symbols with format
,
you can get the default alphabet from the url
module:
var url = require('nanoid/url')
format(random, url, 10) //=> "93ce_Ltuub"
FAQs
A tiny (116 bytes), secure URL-friendly unique string ID generator
We found that nanoid demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
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