How to create a GUID/UUID in Python

Question

How do I create a GUID/UUID in Python that is platform independent? I hear there is a method using ActivePython on Windows but it's Windows only because it uses COM. Is there a method using plain Python?

Answer 1

The uuid module provides immutable UUID objects (the UUID class) and the functions uuid1(), uuid3(), uuid4(), uuid5() for generating version 1, 3, 4, and 5 UUIDs as specified in RFC 4122.

If all you want is a unique ID, you should probably call uuid1() or uuid4().

Note that uuid1() may compromise privacy since it creates a UUID containing the computer’s network address.

uuid4() creates a random UUID.

UUID versions 6, 7 and 8 - new Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) formats for use in modern applications and as database keys - (draft) rfc - are available from https://pypi.org/project/uuid6/

Docs:

• Python 2
• Python 3

Examples (for both Python 2 and 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'

Answer 2

Run this command:

pip install uuid uuid6

And then run you can import uuid1, uuid3, uuid4 and uuid5 functions from the uuid package, and uuid6 and uuid7 functions from the uuid6 package.

An example output of calling each of these functions is as follows (except uuid3 and uuid5 which require parameters):

>>> import uuid, uuid6
>>> print(*(str(i()) for i in [uuid.uuid1, uuid.uuid4, uuid6.uuid6, uuid6.uuid7]), sep="\n")
646e934b-f20c-11ec-ad9f-54a1500ef01b
560e2227-c738-41d9-ad5a-bbed6a3bc273
1ecf20b6-46e9-634b-9e48-b2b9e6010c57
01818aa2-ec45-74e8-1f85-9d74e4846897

Answer 3

If you are making a website or app where you need to every time a unique id. It should be a string a number then UUID is a great package in python which is helping to create a unique id.

**pip install uuid**

import uuid

def get_uuid_id():
    return str(uuid.uuid4())

print(get_uuid_id()) 

OUTPUT example: 89e5b891-cf2c-4396-8d1c-49be7f2ee02d

Answer 4

2019 Answer (for Windows):

If you want a permanent UUID that identifies a machine uniquely on Windows, you can use this trick: (Copied from my answer at https://stackoverflow.com/a/58416992/8874388).

from typing import Optional
import re
import subprocess
import uuid

def get_windows_uuid() -> Optional[uuid.UUID]:
    try:
        # Ask Windows for the device's permanent UUID. Throws if command missing/fails.
        txt = subprocess.check_output("wmic csproduct get uuid").decode()

        # Attempt to extract the UUID from the command's result.
        match = re.search(r"\bUUID\b[\s\r\n]+([^\s\r\n]+)", txt)
        if match is not None:
            txt = match.group(1)
            if txt is not None:
                # Remove the surrounding whitespace (newlines, space, etc)
                # and useless dashes etc, by only keeping hex (0-9 A-F) chars.
                txt = re.sub(r"[^0-9A-Fa-f]+", "", txt)

                # Ensure we have exactly 32 characters (16 bytes).
                if len(txt) == 32:
                    return uuid.UUID(txt)
    except:
        pass # Silence subprocess exception.

    return None

print(get_windows_uuid())

Uses Windows API to get the computer's permanent UUID, then processes the string to ensure it's a valid UUID, and lastly returns a Python object (https://docs.python.org/3/library/uuid.html) which gives you convenient ways to use the data (such as 128-bit integer, hex string, etc).

Good luck!

PS: The subprocess call could probably be replaced with ctypes directly calling Windows kernel/DLLs. But for my purposes this function is all I need. It does strong validation and produces correct results.

Answer 5

If you need to pass UUID for a primary key for your model or unique field then below code returns the UUID object -

 import uuid
 uuid.uuid4()

If you need to pass UUID as a parameter for URL you can do like below code -

import uuid
str(uuid.uuid4())

If you want the hex value for a UUID you can do the below one -

import uuid    
uuid.uuid4().hex

Answer 6

This function is fully configurable and generates unique uid based on the format specified

eg:- [8, 4, 4, 4, 12] , this is the format mentioned and it will generate the following uuid

LxoYNyXe-7hbQ-caJt-DSdU-PDAht56cMEWi

 import random as r

 def generate_uuid():
        random_string = ''
        random_str_seq = "0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
        uuid_format = [8, 4, 4, 4, 12]
        for n in uuid_format:
            for i in range(0,n):
                random_string += str(random_str_seq[r.randint(0, len(random_str_seq) - 1)])
            if n != 12:
                random_string += '-'
        return random_string

Answer 7

If you're using Python 2.5 or later, the uuid module is already included with the Python standard distribution.

Ex:

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

Answer 8

I use GUIDs as random keys for database type operations.

The hexadecimal form, with the dashes and extra characters seem unnecessarily long to me. But I also like that strings representing hexadecimal numbers are very safe in that they do not contain characters that can cause problems in some situations such as '+','=', etc..

Instead of hexadecimal, I use a url-safe base64 string. The following does not conform to any UUID/GUID spec though (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('=', '')