friendly-id 0.3.3

friendly-id is a Python library to generate really unique and url friendly IDs based on UUID and base62

Friendly Id

version 0.3.3

Inspired by FriendlyID

What is the FriendlyId library?

The FriendlyId library converts a given UUID (with 36 characters) to a URL-friendly ID (a "FriendlyId") which is based on Base62 (with a maximum of 22 characters), as in the example below:

UUID                                        Friendly ID

c3587ec5-0976-497f-8374-61e0c2ea3da5   ->   5wbwf6yUxVBcr48AMbz9cb
|                                           |                              
36 characters                               22 characters or less

In addition, this library allows to:

• convert from a FriendlyId back to the original UUID; and
• create a new, random FriendlyId

Why use a FriendlyId?

Universal Unique IDs (UUIDs) provide a non-sequential and unique identifier that can be generated separately from the source database. As a result, it is not possible to guess either the previous or next identifier. That's great, but, to achieve this level of security, a UUID is long (128 bits long) and looks ugly (36 alphanumeric characters including four hyphens which are added to make it easier to read the UUID), as in this example: 123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426655440000.

Such a format is:

• difficult to read (especially if it is part of a URL)
• difficult to remember
• cannot be copied with just two mouse-clicks (you have to select manually the start and end positions)
• can easily become broken across lines when it is copied, pasted, edited, or sent.

FriendlyId library solves these problems by converting a given UUID using Base62 with alphanumeric characters in the range [0-9A-Za-z] into a FriendlyId which consists of a maximum of 22 characters (but in fact often contains fewer characters).

Usage

Python Package

FriendlyId can be installed through PyPI:

python -m pip install friendly-id

Generate a FriendlyId

from friendly_id import friendly_id

id: str = friendly_id(),

Convert UUID to FriendlyId

import uuid
from friendly_id import encode

uid = uuid.uuid4()
id: str = encode(uid),