Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) Generator For Linux, Windows, Java, PHP, C#, Javascript, Python

Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) is a pseudo-random string which consists of 32 letters, numbers (0-9), and 4 hyphens to separate letters. These letters are randomly generated. In probability theory, this value is unique and can be used as a secret and session cookie, etc.

Example GUID

The following line provides a GUID. as we can see there are 4 dashes that separate the values into 5 parts. The first part consist of 6 letters, second part 4, third part 4, forth part 4, and the last fifth part 12 letters. They are generated randomly.

5c981150-9d1d-11e8-98fa-000c297195d3

Generate GUID In Linux

Linux provides a lot of different tools to generate GUID. But one of the most simple and default installed tool is uuidgen . We just issue the command like below.

$ uuidgen

Generate GUID In Windows

Windows operating systems like Server 2008, 20012, 2016, 7, 8, 10 have the ability to generate GUID in PowerShell, 3rd party tools, etc. But the most integrated and fast way is using PowerShell which actually uses .Net  libraries we have already examined in Generating GUID with C# .

[guid]::NewGuid()

Generate GUID In Java

Java programming language and software development kit provides a lot of different types of random number generation and format functions. We can use util class randomUUID() function like below.

java.util.UUID.randomUUID();

Generate GUID In PHP

PHP has different ways to generate GUID. PHP running on the Windows system can use com_create_guid() function but in Linux, we need some external help. We can create a function that will generate random numbers in the specified range and length. We will create a function named GUID() like below and inject com_create_guid() function too.

<?php 

function GUID() 
{ 
   if (function_exists('com_create_guid') === true) 
   { 
       return trim(com_create_guid(), '{}'); 
   } 

   return sprintf('%04X%04X-%04X-%04X-%04X-%04X%04X%04X', mt_rand(0, 65535), mt_rand(0, 65535), mt_rand(0, 65535), 
mt_rand(16384, 20479), mt_rand(32768, 49151), mt_rand(0, 65535), mt_rand(0, 65535), mt_rand(0, 65535)); 
} 

echo GUID(); 

?>

Another way is using openssl functions with some convert.

bin2hex(openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(16));

Generate GUID In C#

C# is a very feature-rich and reliable programming language with useful libraries. C# provides the NewGuid() method in order to create some GUID value. The following snippet will create a GUID value

using System;

class Example 
{
  public static void Main() 
  {
    Guid g;

    g = Guid.NewGuid();
    Console.WriteLine(g);
    Console.WriteLine(Guid.NewGuid());
  }

}

Generate GUID In Python

Python provides uuid module which contains a lot of different functions about the Unique Identifier. We can use uuid1() to generate GUID easily in a single line.

$ python -c 'import uuid; print str(uuid.uuid1())'