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How can I generate a youtube style unique alphanumeric id model id in django

I want dont want to use the django id directly for viewsets in django, since that potentially reveals the number of items.
I already figured out how to generate UUIDs, which work, but are unwieldy and hexadecimal.
Is there a way to generate a guaranteed unique sufficently long alphanummeric string in django similar to a uuid?

Solution

  • You can probably do something like this (although untested):

    import random, string

def random_id_field():
  rnd_id = ''.join(random.choices(string.ascii_letters + string.digits, k=16))
  return rnd_id

class MyModel(models.Model):
  id = models.Charfield(max_length=16, unique=True, primary_key=True, default=random_id_field)

    Update

    In Python 3.6, they introduced the concept of secrets. Here is an example:

    from secrets import token_urlsafe
random_string = token_urlsafe(16)
print(random_string)

    Result: 'x3jFt0X_hZr2B4j6CexixQ'