uuidx

Fast Ruby implementations of UUID versions 4, 6, 7, and 8 🪪

---

What's in the box?

✅ Simple usage documentation written to get started fast. 30 seconds and you're off.

📚 API documentation for the library. Read the docs.

⚡ A reasonably fast, zero dependency implementation of the new UUID standards.

🤖 RBS types for your type checking wants. Typed goodness.

💎 Tests against Ruby 2.7, 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2.

🔒 MFA protection on gem owners.

---

Installation

Using Bundler

Run bundle add uuidx to update your Gemfile and install the gem. You may also add the gem to your Gemfile manually and then run bundle install.

Manual

Use gem install uuidx to install the gem from RubyGems.

Usage

To get started using the default generators for UUID v4, v6, or v7 require the library and call the associated method.

require "uuidx"

Uuidx.v4 # => "2b54639d-e43e-489f-9c64-30ecdcac3c95"
Uuidx.v6 # => "1eda9761-9f6f-6414-8c5f-fd61f1239907"
Uuidx.v7 # => "01863d24-6d1e-78ba-92ee-6e80c79c4e28"

These methods all use default generators and are thread-safe. However, if you are using child processes (like Puma's clustered mode) you should also reset the generators you are using when each child process starts.

# Puma example that resets all default generators.
on_worker_boot do
  Uuidx.reset_v4!
  Uuidx.reset_v6!
  Uuidx.reset_v7!
end

This way you will get thread-safe state access per process without requiring IPC.

Monotonicity & Batching

The simple API provided by Uuidx also supports monotonic batches. Provide the batch size and you will receive an array of UUID values back.

Uuidx.batch_v4(10) # => ["2b54639d-e43e-489f-9c64-30ecdcac3c95", ...]
Uuidx.batch_v6(10) # => ["1eda9761-9f6f-6414-8c5f-fd61f1239907", ...]
Uuidx.batch_v7(10) # => ["01863d24-6d1e-78ba-92ee-6e80c79c4e28", ...]

Advanced Usage

If you require multiple generators you can drop below the simple API presented above to create generators directly.

v6 = Uuidx::Version6.new
v6.generate # => "1eda9adc-2ed9-629e-9a02-4d2ccc87c569"

These generators are lock-free, so if you use them to obtain higher throughput keep in mind that you must ensure they are never shared between threads.

For typical MRI Ruby workloads using multi-process worker strategies state will be cloned and modified using copy-on-write and the thread safety provided by the simple API is adequate.

UUID v8

UUID v8 is a special case of advanced usage that always requires you to build a generator directly. It takes a single parameter to its constructor which must be the class name of your UUID v8 definition.

v8 = Uuidx::Version8.new(MyV8Definition)
v8.generate # => "..."

The definition class should implement the methods custom_a, custom_b, and custom_c in order to fill out the UUID data according to the draft.

See the documentation for Version8 for precise details.

Batching

Any custom UUID v8 generators can also participate in batching by using the batch method. The thread-safety of this depends on your UUID v8 implementation.

Uuidx.batch(v8, 10) # => ["<a v8 uuidx>", ...]

Clock Resolution

If you have need to verify the clock resolution for UUID v6 or v7 you can call the verify_clock_resolution! method on either class. A ClockResolutionError is raised if the system has insufficient precision.

begin
  Uuidx::Version6.verify_clock_resolution! # or Uuidx::Version7
rescue Uuidx::ClockResolutionError
  # ...
end

The API documentation has details about what the clock resolution must be for each of the UUID versions. See the Version 6 and Version 7 documentation for details.

A Note on Clock Timings

The API documentation contains specific details around how the implementations deal with clock drift. See the Uuidx, Version 6, and Version 7 documentation for more information.

Performance

This performance data was captured using benchmark/ips. It uses the following Ruby version

ruby 3.2.0 (2022-12-25 revision a528908271) [arm64-darwin22]

and is run on a Macbook Pro with an M1 Max CPU.

❯ bundle exec ruby test/benchmarks/simple_api.rb 
Warming up --------------------------------------
              stdlib    60.617k i/100ms
               uuid4   106.927k i/100ms
               uuid6   111.417k i/100ms
               uuid7   103.551k i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
              stdlib    626.957k (± 0.3%) i/s -      3.152M in   5.027633s
               uuid4      1.077M (± 1.2%) i/s -      5.453M in   5.065726s
               uuid6      1.121M (± 0.2%) i/s -      5.682M in   5.067392s
               uuid7      1.027M (± 1.3%) i/s -      5.178M in   5.041666s

Comparison:
               uuid6:  1121344.6 i/s
               uuid4:  1076662.4 i/s - 1.04x  (± 0.00) slower
               uuid7:  1027127.8 i/s - 1.09x  (± 0.00) slower
              stdlib:   626957.1 i/s - 1.79x  (± 0.00) slower

As reported, the stdlib version of SecureRandom.uuid is at least 1.70x slower than the simple API implementation of UUID v4.

These timings are good enough that they shouldn't get in the way of any web frameworks.

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 run tests across all supported Ruby versions on Debian and Alpine Linux run make test-all. To run a specific version use make test-[version]; for example, make test-3.2.0.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install.

To release a new version:

1. ensure the documentation and changelog are ready
2. run bundle exec rake rdoc to generate the new documentation and commit it
3. update the version number in lib/uuidx/gem_version.rb
4. run bundle install to update the Gemfile.lock
5. create a release commit with these updates
6. run bundle exec rake release to tag and push the version to RubyGems

Contributing

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

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.