How to generate unique IDS in python

In this article, you’re going to learn how to auto-generate unique IDs in Python.

This can be achieved using the python UUID module, which will automatically generate a random ID of which there less than one chance in a trillion for ID to repeat itself.

basics of UUID

UUID module comes with the python standard library therefore, you don’t need to install anything.

creating a unique random id

To create a random id, you call the uuid4 () method and it will automatically generate a unique id for you just as shown in the example below;

• Example of usage

>>> import uuid
>>> uuid.uuid4()
UUID('4a59bf4e-1653-450b-bc7e-b862d6346daa')

Sample Project

For instance, we want to generate a random unique ID for students in class using UUID, our code will look as shown below;

from uuid import uuid4
​
students = ['James', 'Messi', 'Frederick', 'Elon']
​
for student in students:
    unique_id = str(uuid4())
    print('{} : {}'.format(student, unique_id))

Output

kalebu@kalebu-PC:~$ python3 app.py 
James : 8bc80351-1c1a-42cf-aadf-2bedadbc0264
Messi : 4765f73c-4fb4-40a3-a6f3-cac86b159319
Frederick : 9692cafb-0175-4435-88fd-54bcd2135230
Elon : 903daf6c-8ced-4971-bbf3-e03c8083a34b

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