nanoid

What is nanoid?

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.

What are nanoid's main functionalities?

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'

Other packages similar to nanoid

uuid

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

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

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.

README

Nano ID

English | Русский | 简体中文 | Bahasa Indonesia

A tiny, secure, URL-friendly, unique string ID generator for JavaScript.

“An amazing level of senseless perfectionism, which is simply impossible not to respect.”

• Small. 116 bytes (minified and brotlied). No dependencies. Size Limit controls the size.
• Safe. It uses hardware random generator. Can be used in clusters.
• Short IDs. It uses a larger alphabet than UUID (A-Za-z0-9_-). So ID size was reduced from 36 to 21 symbols.
• Portable. Nano ID was ported to over 20 programming languages.

import { nanoid } from 'nanoid'
model.id = nanoid() //=> "V1StGXR8_Z5jdHi6B-myT"

---

  Made in Evil Martians, product consulting for developer tools.

---

Docs

Read full docs here.

Changelog

5.0.5

• Make browser’s version faster by increasing size a little (by Samuel Elgozi).