BasedUUID: URL-friendly UUIDs for Rails models

Generate “double-clickable”, URL-friendly UUIDs with optional prefixes:

user_763j02ryxh8dbs56mgcjqrmmgt #=> e61c802c-7bb1-4357-929a-9064af8a521a
bpo_12dm1qresn83st62reqdw7f7cv  #=> 226d037c-3b35-40f3-a30b-0ebb78779d9b

This gem encodes UUID primary keys into 26-character lowercase strings using Crockford’s base32 encoding. The optional prefix helps you identify the model it represents.

By default, BasedUUID assumes that you have a UUID primary key (id) in your ActiveRecord model. It doesn’t affect how UUIDs are stored in the database. Prefixes and base32-encoded strings are only used for presentation.

Installation

Add this line to your Gemfile:

gem "based_uuid"

Usage

Add the following line to your model class:

class BlogPost < ApplicationRecord
  has_based_uuid prefix: :bpo
end

post = BlogPost.last
post.based_uuid                #=> bpo_12dm1qresn83st62reqdw7f7cv
post.based_uuid(prefix: false) #=> 12dm1qresn83st62reqdw7f7cv

post.based_uuid_with_prefix
post.based_uuid_without_prefix

Lookup

BasedUUID includes a find_by_based_uuid model method to look up records:

BlogPost.find_by_based_uuid("bpo_12dm1qresn83st62reqdw7f7cv")

# or without the prefix:
BlogPost.find_by_based_uuid("12dm1qresn83st62reqdw7f7cv")

# there’s also the bang version:
BlogPost.find_by_based_uuid!("12dm1qresn83st62reqdw7f7cv")

Generic lookup

The gem provides a generic lookup method to help you find the correct model for the UUID, based on prefix:

BasedUUID.find("bpo_12dm1qresn83st62reqdw7f7cv")
#=> #<BlogPost>
BasedUUID.find("user_763j02ryxh8dbs56mgcjqrmmgt")
#=> #<User>

⚠️ NOTE: Rails lazy-loads models in the development environment, so this method won’t know about your models until you’ve referenced them at least once. If you’re using this method in a Rails console, you’ll need to run BlogPost (or any other model) before you can use it.

BasedUUID as default URL identifiers

BasedUUID aims to be non-intrusive and it doesn’t affect how Rails URLs are generated, so if you want to use it as default URL param, add this to your model:

def to_param
  based_uuid
end

Custom UUID column name

BasedUUID will respect the value of Model.primary_key, so it supports custom primary key names:

class Transaction < ApplicationRecord
  self.primary_key = "txid"

  has_based_uuid prefix: :tx
end

If you want to use a different column, other than the primary key, you can pass it as an option to has_based_uuid:

class Session < ApplicationRecord
  has_based_uuid prefix: :sid, uuid_column: :session_id
end

Use outside ActiveRecord

BasedUUID can be used outside ActiveRecord, too. You can encode any UUID with it:

BasedUUID.encode(uuid: "226d037c-3b35-40f3-a30b-0ebb78779d9b")
BasedUUID.encode(uuid: "226d037c-3b35-40f3-a30b-0ebb78779d9b", prefix: :bpo)
BasedUUID.decode("bpo_12dm1qresn83st62reqdw7f7cv")

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Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/pch/based_uuid.

Credits

This gem is heavily inspired by Stripe IDs and the prefixed_ids gem by Chris Oliver.

Parts of the base32 encoding code are borrowed from the ulid gem by Rafael Sales.