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'