How to create a GUID/UUID in Python

How do I create a GUID 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?

9 Answers

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.

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' 

UUID versions 6 and 7 - new Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) formats for use in modern applications and databases (draft) rfc - are available from

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') 

Copied from : (Since the links posted were not active and they keep updating)

>>> 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') 

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('=', '') 

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 

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

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 ).

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 () 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.

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 

Check this post, helped me a lot. In short, the best option for me was:

import random import string # defining function for random # string id with parameter def ran_gen(size, chars=string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits): return ''.join(random.choice(chars) for x in range(size)) # function call for random string # generation with size 8 and string print (ran_gen(8, "AEIOSUMA23")) 

Because I needed just 4-6 random characters instead of bulky GUID.