You Probably Don't Need UUIDs

UUIDs are great. There are packages to generate them in every major language and generating 1 million (v4) every second it will take ~83,000 years until there's a 1% chance of two being equal. This makes them great for defending against dictionary attacks (where guessing a UUID would be a security threat).

But in most instances UUIDs are overkill. They add unnecessary parsing and storage overhead¹, they lead to unwieldy URLs, and they're impractical to share over the phone. Often a much shorter id string is more fit for purpose.

Here's a TypeScript snippet for generating n-character alphanumeric (only lowercase) pseudo-random strings. Sticking to lowercase makes verbal communication much easier.

const createAlphanumericId = (length: number): string => {
  return Array.from({ length }, () =>
    Math.floor(
      Math.random() * 36
    ).toString(36)
  ).join('')
}