timeflake 0.3.3

Timeflake is a 128-bit, roughly-ordered, URL-safe UUID. Inspired by Twitter's Snowflake, Instagram's ID and Firebase's PushID.

Timeflake

Timeflake is a 128-bit, roughly-ordered, URL-safe UUID. Inspired by Twitter's Snowflake, Instagram's ID and Firebase's PushID.

Features

• Fast. Roughly ordered (K-sortable), incremental timestamp in most significant bits enables faster indexing and less fragmentation on database indices (vs UUID v1/v4).
• Safe. With 1.2e+24 unique timeflakes per millisecond, even if you're creating 50 million of them per millisecond the chance of a collision is still 1 in a billion. You're likely to see a collision when creating 1.3e+12 (one trillion three hundred billion) timeflakes per millisecond.
• Efficient. 128 bits are used to encode a timestamp in milliseconds (48 bits) and a cryptographically generated random number (80 bits).
• Flexible. Out of the box encodings in 128-bit unsigned int, hex, URL-safe base62 and raw bytes.

Usage

import timeflake

# Create a random Timeflake
flake = timeflake.random()
>>> Timeflake(base62='00mx79Rjxvfgr8qat2CeQDs')

# Get the base62, int, hex or bytes representation
flake.base62
>>> '00mx79Rjxvfgr8qat2CeQDs'

flake.hex
>>> '016fa936bff0997a0a3c428548fee8c9'

flake.int
>>> 1909005012028578488143182045514754249

flake.bytes
>>> b'\x01o\xa96\xbf\xf0\x99z\n<B\x85H\xfe\xe8\xc9'

# Convert to the standard library's UUID type
flake.uuid
>>> UUID('016fa936-bff0-997a-0a3c-428548fee8c9')

# Get the timestamp component
flake.timestamp
>>> 1579091935216

# Get the random component
flake.random
>>> 724773312193627487660233

# Parse an existing flake (you can also pass bytes, hex or int representations)
timeflake.parse(from_base62='0002HCZffkHWhKPVdXxs0YH')
>>> Timeflake('0004fbc6872f70fc9e27355a499e8b6d')

# Create from a user defined timestamp or random value:
timeflake.from_values(1579091935216, 724773312193627487660233)
>>> Timeflake('016fa936bff0997a0a3c428548fee8c9')

Components

The timeflake 02i2XhN7hAuaFh3MwztcMd (base62) encodes the following:

# Milliseconds since unix epoch
timestamp = 1579275030563

# Cryptographically generated random number
random    = 851298578153087956398315

Alphabets

The canonical representation is using a custom base62 alphabet, modified to preserve lexicographical order when sorting strings using this encoding. The hex representation has a max length of 32 characters, while the base62 will be 22 characters. Padding is required to be able to derive the encoding from the string length.

The following are all valid representations of the same Timeflake:

int    = 1909226360721144613344160656901255403
hex    = 016fb4209023b444fd07590f81b7b0eb
base62 = 02i2XhN7hAuaFh3MwztcMd

Provided extensions

Django model fields

You can use timeflakes as primary keys for your models. These fields currently support MySQL, Postgres and Sqlite3.

Example usage:

from timeflake.extensions.django import TimeflakePrimaryKeyBinary

class Item(models.Model):
    item_id = TimeflakePrimaryKeyBinary()
    # ...

Note on security

Since the timestamp part is predictable, the search space within any given millisecond is 2^80 random numbers, which is meant to avoid collisions, not to secure or hide information. You should not be using timeflakes for password-reset tokens, API keys or for anything which is security sensitive.

Supported versions

Right now the codebase is only tested with Python 3.7+.

Dependencies

No dependencies other than the standard library.

Contribute

Want to hack on the project? Any kind of contribution is welcome! Simply follow the next steps:

• Fork the project.
• Create a new branch.
• Make your changes and write tests when practical.
• Commit your changes to the new branch.
• Send a pull request, it will be reviewed shortly.
• In case you want to add a feature, please create a new issue and briefly explain what the feature would consist of. For bugs or requests, before creating an issue please check if one has already been created for it.

Changelog

Please see the CHANGELOG for more details.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license. Please read the LICENSE file for more details.

Prior art

• Sharding & IDs at Instagram
• Announcing Snowflake: Twitter
• The 2^120 Ways to Ensure Unique Identifiers