Security News
NIST Misses 2024 Deadline to Clear NVD Backlog
NIST has failed to meet its self-imposed deadline of clearing the NVD's backlog by the end of the fiscal year. Meanwhile, CVE's awaiting analysis have increased by 33% since June.
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.
A tiny, secure, URL-friendly, unique string ID generator for JavaScript.
“An amazing level of senseless perfectionism, which is simply impossible not to respect.”
A-Za-z0-9_-
).
So ID size was reduced from 36 to 21 symbols.import { nanoid } from 'nanoid'
model.id = nanoid() //=> "V1StGXR8_Z5jdHi6B-myT"
Supports modern browsers, IE with Babel, Node.js and React Native. Try to make us smaller in the online tool.
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 three main differences between Nano ID and UUID v4:
uuid/v4
package:
108 bytes instead of 345.$ ./test/benchmark
nanoid 655,798 ops/sec
customAlphabet 635,421 ops/sec
uid.sync 375,816 ops/sec
uuid v4 396,756 ops/sec
secure-random-string 366,434 ops/sec
cuid 183,998 ops/sec
shortid 59,343 ops/sec
Async:
async nanoid 101,966 ops/sec
async customAlphabet 102,471 ops/sec
async secure-random-string 97,206 ops/sec
uid 91,291 ops/sec
Non-secure:
non-secure nanoid 2,754,423 ops/sec
rndm 2,437,262 ops/sec
Test configuration: Dell XPS 2-in-a 7390, Fedora 32, Node.js 13.11.
nanoid-dictionary
with popular alphabets to use with customAlphabet
.nanoid-good
to be sure that your ID doesn't contain any obscene words.See a good article about random generators theory: Secure random values (in Node.js)
Unpredictability. Instead of using the unsafe Math.random()
, Nano ID
uses the crypto
module in Node.js and the Web Crypto API in browsers.
These modules use unpredictable hardware random generator.
Uniformity. random % alphabet
is a popular mistake to make when coding
an ID generator. The distribution 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.
Vulnerabilities: to report a security vulnerability, please use the Tidelift security contact. Tidelift will coordinate the fix and disclosure.
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).
import { nanoid } from 'nanoid'
model.id = nanoid() //=> "Uakgb_J5m9g-0JDMbcJqLJ"
If you want to reduce the ID size (and increase collisions probability), you can pass the size as an argument.
nanoid(10) //=> "IRFa-VaY2b"
Don’t forget to check the safety of your ID size in our ID collision probability calculator.
You can also use a custom alphabet or a random generator.
Do not call nanoid
in the key
prop. In React, key
should be consistent
among renders.
This is the bad example:
<Item key={nanoid()} /> /* DON’T DO IT */
This is the good example (id
will be generated only once):
const Element = () => {
const [id] = React.useState(nanoid)
return <Item key={id} />
}
If you want to use Nano ID in the key
prop, you must set some string prefix
(it is invalid for the HTML ID to start with a number).
<input id={'id' + this.id} type="text"/>
Create React App has a problem with ES modules packages.
TypeError: (0 , _nanoid.nanoid) is not a function
If you have an error above, here is temporary fix:
npm i nanoid@^2.0.0
.React Native does not have built-in random generator.
react-native-get-random-values
docs and install it.import 'react-native-get-random-values'
import { nanoid } from 'nanoid'
In PouchDB and CouchDB, IDs can’t start with an underscore _
.
A prefix is required to prevent this issue, as Nano ID might use a _
at the start of the ID by default.
Override the default ID with the following option:
db.put({
_id: 'id' + nanoid(),
…
})
const mySchema = new Schema({
_id: {
type: String,
default: () => nanoid()
}
})
Nano ID provides ES modules. You do not need to do anything to use Nano ID as ESM in webpack, Rollup, Parcel, or Node.js.
import { nanoid } from 'nanoid'
For quick hacks, you can load Nano ID from CDN. Special minified
nanoid.js
module is available on jsDelivr.
Though, it is not recommended to be used in production because of the lower loading performance.
import { nanoid } from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/nanoid/nanoid.js'
Web Workers do not have access to a secure random generator.
Security is important in IDs, when IDs should be unpredictable. For instance, in "access by URL" link generation. If you do not need unpredictable IDs, but you need to use Web Workers, you can use the non‑secure ID generator.
import { nanoid } from 'nanoid/non-secure'
nanoid() //=> "Uakgb_J5m9g-0JDMbcJqLJ"
Note: non-secure IDs are more prone to collision attacks.
You can get unique ID in terminal by calling npx nanoid
. You need only
Node.js in the system. You do not need Nano ID to be installed anywhere.
$ npx nanoid
npx: installed 1 in 0.63s
LZfXLFzPPR4NNrgjlWDxn
If you want to change alphabet or ID size, you should use nanoid-cli
.
Nano ID was ported to many languages. You can use these ports to have the same ID generator on the client and server side.
Also, CLI is available to generate IDs from a command line.
To generate hardware random bytes, CPU collects electromagnetic noise. In the synchronous API during the noise collection, the CPU is busy and cannot do anything useful in parallel.
Using the asynchronous API of Nano ID, another code can run during the entropy collection.
import { nanoid } from 'nanoid/async'
async function createUser () {
user.id = await nanoid()
}
Unfortunately, you will lose Web Crypto API advantages in a browser if you the asynchronous API. So, currently, in the browser, you are limited with either security or asynchronous behavior.
By default, Nano ID uses hardware random bytes generation for security and low collision probability. If you are not so concerned with security and more concerned with performance, you can use the faster non-secure generator.
import { nanoid } from 'nanoid/non-secure'
const id = nanoid() //=> "Uakgb_J5m9g-0JDMbcJqLJ"
Note: your IDs will be more predictable and prone to collision attacks.
customAlphabet
allows you to create nanoid
with your own alphabet
and ID size.
import { customAlphabet } from 'nanoid'
const nanoid = customAlphabet('1234567890abcdef', 10)
model.id = nanoid() //=> "4f90d13a42"
Check the safety of your custom alphabet and ID size in our
ID collision probability calculator. For more alphabets, check out the options
in nanoid-dictionary
.
Alphabet must contain 256 symbols or less. Otherwise, the security of the internal generator algorithm is not guaranteed.
Customizable asynchronous and non-secure APIs are also available:
import { customAlphabet } from 'nanoid/async'
const nanoid = customAlphabet('1234567890abcdef', 10)
async function createUser () {
user.id = await nanoid()
}
import { customAlphabet } from 'nanoid/non-secure'
const nanoid = customAlphabet('1234567890abcdef', 10)
user.id = nanoid()
customRandom
allows you to create a nanoid
and replace alphabet
and the default random bytes generator.
In this example, a seed-based generator is used:
import { customRandom } from 'nanoid'
const rng = seedrandom(seed)
const nanoid = customRandom('abcdef', 10, size => {
return (new Uint8Array(size)).map(() => 256 * rng())
})
nanoid() //=> "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 customRandom
,
you can get the default alphabet using the urlAlphabet
.
const { customRandom, urlAlphabet } = require('nanoid')
const nanoid = customRandom(urlAlphabet, 10, random)
Asynchronous and non-secure APIs are not available for customRandom
.
3.1.2
FAQs
A tiny (116 bytes), secure URL-friendly unique string ID generator
The npm package nanoid receives a total of 37,976,759 weekly downloads. As such, nanoid popularity was classified as popular.
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.
Did you know?
Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.
Security News
NIST has failed to meet its self-imposed deadline of clearing the NVD's backlog by the end of the fiscal year. Meanwhile, CVE's awaiting analysis have increased by 33% since June.
Security News
Cloudflare has launched a setup wizard allowing users to easily create and manage a security.txt file for vulnerability disclosure on their websites.
Security News
The Socket Research team breaks down a malicious npm package targeting the legitimate DOMPurify library. It uses obfuscated code to hide that it is exfiltrating browser and crypto wallet data.