short-id

A tiny Rust library for generating short, URL-safe, unique identifiers.

What is this?

Unlike full UUIDs (which are 36 characters and include hyphens), short-id gives you compact 14-character strings that are easy to copy, paste, and use in URLs.

This library has two main goals:

Make it very easy to generate short random IDs for things like request IDs, user-facing tokens, test data, and log correlation.
Provide an optional "ordered" variant where IDs include a timestamp prefix, so when you sort them as strings they roughly follow creation time.

It is intentionally minimal - no configuration, no custom alphabets, no complex API. You just call:

short_id() for a random URL-safe ID
short_id_ordered() for a URL-safe ID that is roughly time-ordered

This crate is for you if you want something simpler and shorter than UUIDs, and you don't need strict UUID semantics or reversibility.

Quick Start

use short_id::short_id;

// Generate a random ID
let id = short_id();
println!("Request ID: {}", id);
// Example output: "X7K9mP2nQwE-Tg"

Installation

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]

short-id = "0.3"

Usage

Random IDs

Perfect for request IDs, session tokens, or any unique identifier:

use short_id::short_id;

let request_id = short_id();
let session_id = short_id();
let token = short_id();

// Each ID is 14 characters, URL-safe, and unique
assert_eq!(request_id.len(), 14);

Time-Ordered IDs

For IDs that roughly sort by creation time:

use short_id::short_id_ordered;

let id1 = short_id_ordered();
std::thread::sleep(std::time::Duration::from_secs(1));
let id2 = short_id_ordered();

// IDs sort chronologically
assert!(id1 < id2);

This is useful for:

Log entries that should sort by time
Event IDs in chronological order
Resource IDs where temporal order matters

Convenience Macros

use short_id::{id, ordered_id};

let random = id!();          // Same as short_id()
let ordered = ordered_id!(); // Same as short_id_ordered()

Typed Wrapper

use short_id::ShortId;

let id = ShortId::random();   // Returns ShortId newtype
let id = ShortId::ordered();  // Time-ordered variant

// Convert to/from String
let s: String = id.into();
let id: ShortId = s.into();

API Reference

Functions:

short_id() -> String - Generate a random ID
short_id_ordered() -> String - Generate a time-ordered ID (requires std)

Macros:

id!() - Shorthand for short_id()
ordered_id!() - Shorthand for short_id_ordered()

Type:

ShortId - Newtype wrapper with methods:
- ShortId::random() -> Self
- ShortId::ordered() -> Self (requires std)
- as_str(&self) -> &str
- into_string(self) -> String
- Implements: Display, AsRef<str>, From<String>, From<ShortId> for String

All IDs are:

Exactly 14 characters
URL-safe: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, -, _
Cryptographically secure (using OsRng)
Base64url encoded (no padding)

`no_std` Support

This crate works in no_std environments with alloc:

[dependencies]

short-id = { version = "0.3", default-features = false }

Note: In no_std mode, only short_id() is available. The short_id_ordered() function requires the std feature because it needs std::time::SystemTime.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

For Maintainers

Releases are automated via GitHub Actions. See RELEASE.md for full details.

Quick release:

# Update Cargo.toml and CHANGELOG.md

git add Cargo.toml CHANGELOG.md

git commit -m "Release v0.1.1"

git push origin main


# Tag triggers automatic publish to crates.io

git tag v0.1.1

git push origin v0.1.1

Or use the release script:

./scripts/release.sh 0.1.1

License

MIT

short-id 0.3.0