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

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

• Small. 142 bytes (minified and gzipped). No dependencies. It uses Size Limit to control size.
• Safe. It uses cryptographically strong random APIs and tests distribution of symbols.
• Fast. It’s 16% faster than UUID.
• Compact. It uses a larger alphabet than UUID (A-Za-z0-9_~). So ID size was reduced from 36 to 21 symbols.

var nanoid = require('nanoid')
model.id = nanoid() //=> "V1StGXR8_Z5jdHi6B~myT"

The generator supports Node.js, React Native, and all browsers.

Security

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 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.

Comparison with UUID

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:

1. Nano ID uses a bigger alphabet, so a similar number of random bits are packed in just 21 symbols instead of 36.
2. Nano ID code is 3 times less than uuid/v4 package: 142 bytes instead of 435.

Benchmark

$ ./test/benchmark
nanoid                    413,579 ops/sec
nanoid/generate           401,349 ops/sec
uid.sync                  354,882 ops/sec
uuid/v4                   353,836 ops/sec
shortid                    39,152 ops/sec

Async:
nanoid/async               85,168 ops/sec
nanoid/async/generate      81,037 ops/sec
uid                        78,426 ops/sec

Non-secure:
nanoid/non-secure       2,718,186 ops/sec
rndm                    2,544,612 ops/sec

Usage

Normal

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).

const 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"

Don’t forget to check the safety of your ID length in our ID collision probability calculator.

React Native

To generate secure random IDs in React Native, you must use a native random generator and asynchronous API:

const generateSecureRandom = require('react-native-securerandom').generateSecureRandom
const format = require('nanoid/async/format')
const url = require('nanoid/url')

async function createUser () {
  user.id = await format(generateSecureRandom, url, 21);
}

Web Workers

Web Workers don’t 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 don’t need unpredictable IDs, but you need Web Workers support, you can use non‑secure ID generator.

const nanoid = require('nanoid/non-secure')
model.id = nanoid() //=> "Uakgb_J5m9g~0JDMbcJqLJ"

Async

To generate hardware random bytes, CPU will collect electromagnetic noise. During the collection, CPU doesn’t work.

If we will use asynchronous API for random generator, another code could be executed during the entropy collection.

const nanoid = require('nanoid/async')

async function createUser () {
  user.id = await nanoid()
}

Unfortunately, you will not have any benefits in a browser, since Web Crypto API doesn’t have asynchronous API.

Custom Alphabet or Length

If you want to change the ID's alphabet or length you can use the low-level generate module.

const generate = require('nanoid/generate')
model.id = generate('1234567890abcdef', 10) //=> "4f90d13a42"

Check the safety of your custom alphabet and ID length in our ID collision probability calculator. You can find popular alphabets in nanoid-dictionary.

Alphabet must contain 256 symbols or less. Otherwise, the generator will not be secure.

Asynchronous API is also available:

const generate = require('nanoid/async/generate')
async function createUser () {
  user.id = await generate('1234567890abcdef', 10)
}

Custom Random Bytes Generator

You can replace the default safe random generator using the format module. For instance, to use a seed-based generator.

const format = require('nanoid/format')

function random (size) {
  const result = []
  for (let 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 file.

const url = require('nanoid/url')
format(random, url, 10) //=> "93ce_Ltuub"

Asynchronous API is also available:

const format = require('nanoid/async/format')
const url = require('nanoid/url')

function random (size) {
  return new Promise(…)
}

async function createUser () {
  user.id = await format(random, url, 10)
}

Tools

• ID size calculator to choice smaller ID size depends on your case.
• nanoid-dictionary with popular alphabets to use with nanoid/generate.
• nanoid-cli to generate ID from CLI.
• nanoid-good to be sure that your ID doesn't contain any obscene words.

Other Programming Languages

• C#
• Clojure and ClojureScript
• Crystal
• Dart
• Go
• Elixir
• Haskell
• Java
• Nim
• PHP
• Python
• Ruby
• Rust
• Swift

Also, CLI tool is available to generate IDs from a command line.

Changelog

1.3.4

• Reduce non-secure size.
• Add async callback type check.