pid/puid

Generate an unique ID depending on time, machine and process for use in a distributed environment.

puid's Issues

Using a salt key to ensure even more uniqueness

Hi

You're asking for feedback about the "counter" part of the uid. So here's one :)
Maybe you could use a user-defined salt string in some config file and bake it into the counter part or the whole thing. What do you think ?

Exclude some files from npm package

• test/
• examples/
• Gruntfile.js

Either by using .npmignore or the files key in package.json

Support for typescript

Could we add typescript type definitions to this repo? Would you prefer types be published to https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped instead?

puid on client site (brainstorming task)

http://www.w3.org/TR/http://www.w3.org/TR/hr-time//
http://www.w3.org/TR/hr-time/#sec-DOMHighResTimeStamphttps://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/DOMHighResTimeStamp
https://gist.github.com/paulirish/5438650 // polyfill
http://www.sitepoint.com/discovering-the-high-resolution-time-api/
http://updates.html5rocks.com/2012/08/When-milliseconds-are-not-enough-performance-now

created the task only as reminder.... actually I don't need it on client-side
If you have input/thoughts, feel free to contribute ;-)

Change epoch default value

The default value for the epoch value until v0.4.x is "1999-07-02 03:00:00 pm", there was a foul, because the timezone isn't set, so it differ from the local timezone on the machine it was generated. I fix/change this in version v0.5.x to "1999-06-07 03:00:00 pm GMT". The new datetime is before the old one, so it won't break IDs generated with earlier versions of puid.

The possibility that a ID with v0.4 will collide, is only possible if

• your hosts in the distributed environment are in different timezones
• and only if a ID is generated in the same nanosecond (+hours the timezone differs)
• and the same random counter will occur
• and you miss to set a different node id.

So, there isn't really a chance for a collision ;-)

But it should be fixed ;-)
Please update to v0.5.x

The resolution of the timestamp used for long PUID should be milliseconds

As stated in the title, you are using Date.now() to get the timestamp and encode it. Date.now() returns milliseconds based timestamp instead of microseconds

Reference:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/now

Error "Cannot read property '0' of undefined" when call generate

var Puid = require('puid');
var puid = new Puid(false);
var schema = mongoose.Schema({
    _id:{
        type: String,
        default: puid.generate,
    },
});
------
//Got below error when try to use the mongoose model
TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of undefined
    at model.generate (C:\Workspace\Ioko\Node\yiiep\node_modules\puid\lib\puid.js:64:18)

Why I need to create an empty instance for generate an id?

That dose not seems the make sens.

Why no just

Puid.generate()

instead of

var puid = new Puid();
puid.generate();

bower

Is it possible to see this in bower? Thinking of using it client-side.

uuid module

Not sure if you are aware, but there is a uuid module:
https://github.com/shtylman/node-uuid

Which generates uuids based on the RFC. This is more standard and doesn't involve having to make a custom scheme. I would recommend using it :)

PUID vs. UUID?

I'm confused as you do not state anything about the relationships of PUIDs to UUIDs and from your PUID description I also do not see what benefit PUIDs provide over UUIDs. Can you please add some description about the relationships between PUIDs and UUIDs to your project, because UUIDs are standardized since a decade and seem to solve the same problem as PUIDs, hence it is vital to easily understand what different problem PUIDs seem to solve or why they solve the same problem better. Thanks.

nonce

This looks neato. 👍 I have bit of a random question...

How appropriate might it be, to use a puid as a nonce in an HMAC protocol exchange?

Can you explain the difference between PUID and UUID?

I’m curious why create a new kind of identifier that seemingly solves the same problem as UUID. Is it because of Javascript library availability?