scuid

What is scuid?

The scuid npm package is designed to generate short, collision-resistant, URL-friendly unique identifiers. These identifiers are suitable for use where a unique string is necessary, such as database keys, component ids, or any other unique element identifier in a distributed system.

What are scuid's main functionalities?

Generating a unique identifier

This feature allows the generation of a unique identifier string that is URL-friendly and highly unlikely to collide with other generated identifiers.

"const scuid = require('scuid');
const id = scuid();
console.log(id); // Outputs a unique identifier string"

Generating a unique identifier with a custom prefix

This feature allows the generation of a unique identifier with a custom prefix, which can be useful for namespacing or categorizing identifiers.

"const scuid = require('scuid');
const idWithPrefix = scuid('usr_');
console.log(idWithPrefix); // Outputs a unique identifier string with 'usr_' prefix"

Other packages similar to scuid

uuid

The uuid package generates RFC-compliant UUIDs. It offers different versions of UUIDs, such as v1 (timestamp-based), v4 (random), and others. Unlike scuid, which generates shorter, URL-friendly IDs, UUIDs are longer and standardized.

nanoid

NanoID is a tiny, secure, URL-friendly, unique string ID generator. It is similar to scuid in that it produces short, unique identifiers, but it also allows for custom alphabet and size, providing more flexibility in the generation process.

shortid

ShortId is another package for generating short non-sequential url-friendly unique ids. However, it has been deprecated in favor of NanoID due to the potential for local collisions under heavy use and other issues.

README

scuid

Collision-resistant IDs optimized for horizontal scaling and performance.

A slim, alternative, and compatible implementation of cuid for node, also featuring a wide range of options, as well as custom random number generator support. It can serve as a drop-in replacement, and is also faster than cuid.

Install via npm

$ npm install --save scuid

Usage

var scuid = require( 'scuid' )

Generate an ID

var id = scuid()
> 'ciux3hs0x0000io10cusdm8r2'

Generate a slug

var slug = scuid.slug()
> '6x1i0r0'

Get the process' fingerprint

var fingerprint = scuid.fingerprint()
> 'io10'

Use a custom (P)RNG

// Create a random number generator;
// It has to have a method called `random`
var generator = {
  random: function() {
    return 5 // chosen by fair dice roll
  }
}

// Create a custom scuid instance
var scuid = require( 'scuid' ).create({
  rng: generator
})

Use other custom options

Note that fiddeling with these might make your IDs incompatible with cuid's guarantees.

var scuid = require( 'scuid' ).create({
  prefix: 'c', // the ID's prefix
  base: 36, // radix used in .toString() calls (2-36)
  blockSize: 4, // block size to pad and trim to
  fill: '0', // block padding character
  pid: process.pid, // process ID
  fingerprint: scuid.createFingerprint( [pid], [hostname] ), // Machine fingerprint
  rng: Math, // Random number generator
})

Tests

Just like cuid, collision resistance for both – slugs and IDs – is tested over 1 million and 2 million iterations respectively. To run the tests, run:

$ npm test

Benchmarks

$ npm run benchmark

scuid
  id ............................................. 573,618 op/s
  slug ........................................... 673,732 op/s
  fingerprint .................................... 131,156,394 op/s

cuid
  id ............................................. 445,260 op/s
  slug ........................................... 531,770 op/s
  fingerprint .................................... 125,159,685 op/s