UUIDv7 for Python

A simple module for generating UUIDv7s with creation times, and for extracting the time from a UUID.

ℹ️ At the time of writing, Python had no UUIDv7 support. It does now, but still doesn't allow providing or extracting timestamps, which we do. Beware that there is also an abandoned package named uuid7 that uses a draft RFC and produces all wrong timestamps.

• Standards-compliant: Follows the final UUIDv7 specification.
• Pythonic: Uses stdlib datetime and UUID facilities rather than (milli)seconds, custom UUID types, or bare strings, as used by alternatives such as uuid7-rs.
• Lightweight: A tiny pure-Python module with no dependencies, fast enough to process about a million UUIDv7s per second per CPU core.

Installation

pip install uuid7-standard

Or, add to your project using uv:

uv add uuid7-standard

Usage

import uuid7
from datetime import datetime, UTC
from uuid import UUID

# Create a random UUIDv7 with the current timestamp, same as uuid.uuid7()
u = uuid7.create()
print(str(u), u.bytes)

# Create one with a specific timestamp
when = datetime(1970, 1, 1, tzinfo=UTC)
u = uuid7.create(when)

# Extract the timestamp
u = UUID('00000000-0000-7dac-b3e3-ecb571bb3e2f')
timestamp = uuid7.time(u)  # 1970-01-01 UTC

uuid7.create(when: datetime?) -> UUID

Create a UUIDv7 with timestamp-based ordering.

The current time is used unless when is passed as a datetime (local time or timezone-aware). This is useful for creating multiple UUIDv7s with precisely the same timestamp.

uuid7.time(u: UUID|str) -> datetime

Extract the timestamp from a UUIDv7. Raises ValueError if the UUID is not a UUIDv7.

uuid7.UUID: re-export of stdlib UUID

Useful when you want to indicate explicitly that a value is expected to be UUIDv7 while avoiding a separate import uuid.

Note that uuid7.UUID is uuid.UUID and does not enforce the UUIDv7 format. It does, however, help humans and coding agents avoid accidentally using uuid4() when working with such values.