djm
commented
3 years ago Planned usage in YJ in something like this..
# base model file
def get_model_prefix(model_class, field_instance, field_name):
return model_class.PREFIX
class AbstractBaseModel():
PREFIX: str
public_id = CuidField(
prefix=get_model_prefix,
help_text="The public ID for this model"
)
# actual model file
class CustomerModel(AbstractBaseModel):
PREFIX = "cus_"
Summary
Introduce
django-cuidfield, a Django ModelField that allows easy handling & persistence ofcuids for entity ID or other purposes.Why?
So that we can have a global ID system for database entities @ YunoJuno to aid in looking up/discovery of entities, and a future-proof ID system to scale with.
Incremental Integer IDs
Example:
127192Upsides: fast for database lookups due to monotonically increasing number, easy to understand; generally short but each character can only represent 1-9.
Downsides: guessable and thus iterable; reveal quantity of entities; not collision resistant, require the database sequencer to generate them thus cannot be generated client side; if presented alone, hard to tell what entity it represents.
UUIDs
Example:
af4876bf-7e6d-4b48-8a0d-813c6d3087e1Upsides: unguessable, can be generated client side, collision resistant to an extent.
Downsides: ugly in general & especially in URLs; they come in hyphenated and not-hyphenated versions so you end up having to support both; if presented alone, still hard to tell what entity it represents; collision resistance can fall apart when generating many per ms across many devices; not monotonically increasing and thus are bad as high-performance primary keys (cannot rely on binary search); long.
CUIDs
Example:
ckoydyjiv000001jndl1mgttaSee the README for a longer description but..
Upsides: unlikely to be guessed; collision resistant across many devices; client side generation possible with tiny bundle; built for speedy generation; monotonically incrementing via the timestamp segment - so binary search works for fast lookups at db level.
Downsides: does not hide the order of ID generation; can reveal precise time something was created.
Prefixed CUIDs
What this library provides.
Example:
cus_ckoydyjiv000001jndl1mgttaAll the benefits of the above, but when provided with the ID alone - you can also tell its type. With this known you can do lots of fun stuff like making an quick-lookup input where you can dump an ID and automatically be sent to the right location. It's also incredibly handy in logs and such because you no longer need to include what the entity is - the ID handles that for you.