In Python, how do you make a GUID/UUID?

Problem

In Python, how do I make a platform-independent GUID? I’ve heard there’s a technique that uses ActivePython on Windows, but it’s only for Windows because it relies on COM. Is there a way to do it using ordinary Python?

Asked by Jonathon Watney

Solution #1

Docs:

Examples (for Python 2 and Python 3):

>>> import uuid

>>> # make a random UUID
>>> uuid.uuid4()
UUID('bd65600d-8669-4903-8a14-af88203add38')

>>> # Convert a UUID to a string of hex digits in standard form
>>> str(uuid.uuid4())
'f50ec0b7-f960-400d-91f0-c42a6d44e3d0'

>>> # Convert a UUID to a 32-character hexadecimal string
>>> uuid.uuid4().hex
'9fe2c4e93f654fdbb24c02b15259716c'

Answered by stuartd

Solution #2

The uuid module is already included with the Python standard distribution if you’re running Python 2.5 or later.

Ex:

>>> import uuid
>>> uuid.uuid4()
UUID('5361a11b-615c-42bf-9bdb-e2c3790ada14')

Answered by Jay

Solution #3

https://docs.python.org/3/library/uuid.html (Because the links posted were inactive and were constantly updated)

>>> import uuid

>>> # make a UUID based on the host ID and current time
>>> uuid.uuid1()
UUID('a8098c1a-f86e-11da-bd1a-00112444be1e')

>>> # make a UUID using an MD5 hash of a namespace UUID and a name
>>> uuid.uuid3(uuid.NAMESPACE_DNS, 'python.org')
UUID('6fa459ea-ee8a-3ca4-894e-db77e160355e')

>>> # make a random UUID
>>> uuid.uuid4()
UUID('16fd2706-8baf-433b-82eb-8c7fada847da')

>>> # make a UUID using a SHA-1 hash of a namespace UUID and a name
>>> uuid.uuid5(uuid.NAMESPACE_DNS, 'python.org')
UUID('886313e1-3b8a-5372-9b90-0c9aee199e5d')

>>> # make a UUID from a string of hex digits (braces and hyphens ignored)
>>> x = uuid.UUID('{00010203-0405-0607-0809-0a0b0c0d0e0f}')

>>> # convert a UUID to a string of hex digits in standard form
>>> str(x)
'00010203-0405-0607-0809-0a0b0c0d0e0f'

>>> # get the raw 16 bytes of the UUID
>>> x.bytes
'\x00\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08\t\n\x0b\x0c\r\x0e\x0f'

>>> # make a UUID from a 16-byte string
>>> uuid.UUID(bytes=x.bytes)
UUID('00010203-0405-0607-0809-0a0b0c0d0e0f')

Answered by Balaji Boggaram Ramanarayan

Solution #4

For database operations, I utilize GUIDs as random keys.

I find the hexadecimal form, with its dashes and extra letters, to be excessively long. But I also enjoy that strings representing hexadecimal numbers are particularly safe because they don’t contain characters like ‘+’,’=’, and other characters that can cause problems in specific instances.

I use a url-safe base64 string instead of hexadecimal. The following, however, does not comply with any UUID/GUID specification (other than having the required amount of randomness).

import base64
import uuid

# get a UUID - URL safe, Base64
def get_a_uuid():
    r_uuid = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(uuid.uuid4().bytes)
    return r_uuid.replace('=', '')

Answered by Chris Dutrow

Solution #5

If you need to supply a UUID as a primary key for a model or a unique field, use the code below to get the UUID object –

 import uuid
 uuid.uuid4()

If you need to pass UUID as a URL parameter, use the code below –

import uuid
str(uuid.uuid4())

You can get the hex value for a UUID by doing the following –

import uuid    
uuid.uuid4().hex

Answered by Mobasshir Bhuiya

Post is based on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/534839/how-to-create-a-guid-uuid-in-python