vcti-short-uid 1.2.1

VCollab Short UID - short, URL-safe unique identifier generator

Short UID Generator

Purpose

VCollab applications frequently need short, unique identifiers for temporary file names, directory names, session IDs, or other scenarios where brief, collision-resistant strings are needed.

The vcti-short-uid package provides ShortUID -- a generator that produces URL-safe identifiers by hashing a combination of entropy, salt, timestamp, and randomness. The result is truncated to a configurable length (default: 8 characters).

This package has zero external dependencies.

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Installation

From GitHub (recommended for development)

# Latest main branch
pip install vcti-short-uid


### From a GitHub Release

Download the wheel from the
[Releases](https://github.com/vcollab/vcti-python-short-uid/releases)
page and install directly:

```bash
pip install vcti-short-uid>=1.2.1

In requirements.txt

vcti-short-uid>=1.2.1

In pyproject.toml dependencies

dependencies = [
    "vcti-short-uid>=1.2.1",
]

---

Quick Start

from vcti.shortuid import ShortUID

# One-shot generation (no instance needed)
uid = ShortUID.quick()          # e.g. "a3Bx9kLm"

# Reusable generator with entropy seed
gen = ShortUID(entropy="my-app")
uid1 = gen.generate()                     # 8-char default
uid2 = gen.generate(salt="report.pdf")    # salt adds context

# Custom length
long_uid = ShortUID.quick(length=16)      # 16-char ID

---

Public API

ShortUID(entropy=None, length=8)

Create a generator instance.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
entropy	str | None	None	Optional base entropy seed
length	int	8	Number of characters in generated IDs (range: 1--43)

Raises:

• TypeError -- if length is not an integer, or entropy is not a string/None.
• ValueError -- if length is outside the range [1, 43].

ShortUID.generate(salt=None) -> str

Generate a short, URL-safe unique identifier.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
salt	str | None	None	Additional context string

Raises:

• TypeError -- if salt is not a string/None.

ShortUID.quick(length=8) -> str (classmethod)

Convenience one-liner -- creates a temporary instance and generates one ID.

repr(ShortUID(...))

Returns a string like ShortUID(entropy='my-app', length=8) for debugging.

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Documentation

• Design -- Concepts and trade-offs
• Source Guide -- Codebase walkthrough
• API Reference -- Autodoc for all modules
• Changelog -- Release history