Short UID Generator

Short, URL-safe unique identifier generator.

Overview

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.

Installation

pip install vcti-short-uid

In requirements.txt

vcti-short-uid>=1.3.0

In pyproject.toml dependencies

dependencies = [
    "vcti-short-uid>=1.3.0",
]

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.

Dependencies

None. Standard library only (base64, hashlib, secrets, time).

Documentation

If you want to… Read
Get started using the package Quick Start above
Understand the architecture and design decisions docs/design.md
Navigate and understand the source docs/source-guide.md
Look up a specific function or type docs/api.md
See the release history CHANGELOG.md

Project links

Data verified by PyPI on Jul 19, 2026
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  • Released:
Newer release available (2.0.0)

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Credits

Author: Visual Collaboration Technologies Inc.

GitHub Statistics

Data verified by PyPI on Jul 19, 2026
The GitHub source repository was provided by the project maintainers and verified by PyPI at the time of upload. Stars, forks, and open issues/PRs are derived from that repository and have not been independently verified.

License expression

LicenseRef-Proprietary
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Requires

Python <3.15, >=3.12

Provides Extra

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Classifiers

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