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You Don't Need UUID

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Re: You Don't Need UUID

#71

Post by dheera »

i_am_jl wrote: post #45
iaaan wrote: post #3

The crux of this argument seems to be that UUIDs are too long? Which I disagree with. I can't memorize them, no, and it would be cumbersome to try to say one aloud, but these aren't situations I've ever found myself in. Does it make the URL in the URL bar longer? Yeah, but does that matter?

>Yeah, but does that matter? I'm really reaching here, but an ID that omits special characters is easier to extract from a url, since it can be double-clicked in a URL bar to select it, whereas a GUID with hyphens forces the user to select the beginning and the end of the string. Realistically I think this matters to developers more than users (I hope your application doesn't force users to interact with GUIDs in the…

> easier to extract from a url, since it can be double-clicked

Maybe the double-click logic needs to be less stupid then. Or have it progressive, e.g. double-click = alphanumeric, triple-click = stop at symbols, quadruple-click = stop at slashes only, quintiple-click = the whole URL.

Use the device microphone to listen for swear words and adjust algorithm with machine learning accordingly

Re: You Don't Need UUID

#72

Post by insanitybit »

bandergirl wrote: post #49
eternityforest wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It somewhat matters aesthetically, but mostly people are going to ignore long random strings. UUIDs are at least visually kind of white noise, companies have no problem+with+links?that=look&like=this, so why do they care about UUIDs?

apple.com/iphone You can't beat that. Or would you rather receive texts that include the following? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09V3HZ8B5/?pd_rd_w=DAycy&content-id=amzn1.sym.04e31e32-5e01-4048-8b59-a557891d595f:amzn1.sym.04e31e32-5e01-4048-8b59-a557891d595f&pf_rd_p=04e31e32-5e01-4048-8b59-a557891d595f&pf_rd_r=M1KXM468KNZJV189JBE7&pd_rd_wg=3O1uC&pd_rd_r=e51c1edc-213f-4c6d-b081-e23afa6bf4ab&ref_=vn_s_iwp&qid=1694453553…

Apple doesn't need to create pages for millions of arbitrary items for sale.

Re: You Don't Need UUID

#73

Post by tombert »

i_am_jl wrote: post #45
iaaan wrote: post #3

The crux of this argument seems to be that UUIDs are too long? Which I disagree with. I can't memorize them, no, and it would be cumbersome to try to say one aloud, but these aren't situations I've ever found myself in. Does it make the URL in the URL bar longer? Yeah, but does that matter?

>Yeah, but does that matter? I'm really reaching here, but an ID that omits special characters is easier to extract from a url, since it can be double-clicked in a URL bar to select it, whereas a GUID with hyphens forces the user to select the beginning and the end of the string. Realistically I think this matters to developers more than users (I hope your application doesn't force users to interact with GUIDs in the…

As you said in your edit, you can of course base64 the GUID, but also don't most GUID libraries have an option to just omit the hyphens? I know .NET allows you to do that, and even correctly parse GUIDs that don't have any hyphens.

I usually did that in .NET simply because I thought it was prettier without the hyphens.

Re: You Don't Need UUID

#74

Post by siva7 »

> A UUID alternative like a73ba12d-1d8b-2516-3aee-4b15e563a835 is just wasteful from an user’s perspective.

The argumentation in this article is pretty poor from my experience. A UUID isn’t meant to be handled by the non-technical end user. The end user usually doesn’t and shouldn’t care about the URL. I can assure there are bigger architectural problems in your design if your user has to care about accessible internal ids.

Re: You Don't Need UUID

#75

Post by afgrant »

czechdeveloper wrote: post #13
emodendroket wrote: post #4

> A simple ID like 3c6n63N is more than enough to represent any product while keeping it readable and making communication easier. A UUID alternative like a73ba12d-1d8b-2516-3aee-4b15e563a835 is just wasteful from a user’s perspective. I would challenge the premise we appear to be starting from, that the average end user cares to be dealing with any random string of numbers and digits. GUIDs work well, they’re implem…

Plus I could easily represent UUID in base64, such as JlEt5BSYe0enwB7nxl5V6g, which makes it shorter if I need that.

The hazard of base64 is the use of '+', '/', and '=' characters, which most HTTP engines treat as special.

Re: You Don't Need UUID

#76

Post by insanitybit »

richbell wrote: post #11
iaaan wrote: post #3

The crux of this argument seems to be that UUIDs are too long? Which I disagree with. I can't memorize them, no, and it would be cumbersome to try to say one aloud, but these aren't situations I've ever found myself in. Does it make the URL in the URL bar longer? Yeah, but does that matter?

> Does it make the URL in the URL bar longer? Yeah, but does that matter? Yes. That's one of the author's arguments. ) A simple ID like 3c6n63N is more than enough to represent any product while keeping it readable and making communication easier. A UUID alternative like a73ba12d-1d8b-2516-3aee-4b15e563a835 is just wasteful from an user’s perspective.

I guess in the rare instance where you're literally reading a URL out loud it would help. Most of the time you're sending a URL, at which point length is mostly irrelevant as you're "copy/paste" on both sides.

Re: You Don't Need UUID

#77

Post by tzot »

i_am_jl wrote: post #45
iaaan wrote: post #3

The crux of this argument seems to be that UUIDs are too long? Which I disagree with. I can't memorize them, no, and it would be cumbersome to try to say one aloud, but these aren't situations I've ever found myself in. Does it make the URL in the URL bar longer? Yeah, but does that matter?

>Yeah, but does that matter? I'm really reaching here, but an ID that omits special characters is easier to extract from a url, since it can be double-clicked in a URL bar to select it, whereas a GUID with hyphens forces the user to select the beginning and the end of the string. Realistically I think this matters to developers more than users (I hope your application doesn't force users to interact with GUIDs in the…

> I'm really reaching here, but an ID that omits special characters is easier to extract from a url, since it can be double-clicked in a URL bar to select it, whereas a GUID with hyphens forces the user to select the beginning and the end of the string.

The is-hyphen-part-of-a-word issue depends on the text control (browser, UI widget library, …) / terminal you use, which is not universal.

In any case, the hyphens/dashes are not required part of the representation, and one can use the “dashless” representation (exactly 32 hex digits) in URLs and in-code without any issues whatsoever, as far as I know; for example, Postgres accepts either “dashful” or “dashless” UUIDs the same.

Re: You Don't Need UUID

#78

Post by AdamH12113 »

iaaan wrote: post #3

The crux of this argument seems to be that UUIDs are too long? Which I disagree with. I can't memorize them, no, and it would be cumbersome to try to say one aloud, but these aren't situations I've ever found myself in. Does it make the URL in the URL bar longer? Yeah, but does that matter?

> Does it make the URL in the URL bar longer? Yeah, but does that matter?

I appreciate shorter URLs any time I copy and paste them, which always involves looking at them and sometimes involves scrolling to the end to remove tracking- and search-related fluff.

128 bits is an absurd amount for a unique ID within a single system. Even 48 bits is very, very large -- enough to provide a unique ID (MAC address) to every Ethernet device made for something like 100 years.

The purpose of a UUID is to provide a negligible probability of collisions between randomly-generated IDs in a global space forever. Almost no applications require that, so most of the time using a UUID is just needlessly taking up space.

Re: You Don't Need UUID

#79

Post by Macha »

afgrant wrote: post #75
czechdeveloper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus I could easily represent UUID in base64, such as JlEt5BSYe0enwB7nxl5V6g, which makes it shorter if I need that.

The hazard of base64 is the use of '+', '/', and '=' characters, which most HTTP engines treat as special.

Luckily the spec provides for a url safe variant (sometimes called base64url): https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4648#section-5

Re: You Don't Need UUID

#80

Post by SoftTalker »

insanitybit wrote: post #63

I think there's a better "You Don't Need UUID", which is that you probably aren't going to generate so many integers per second that you need to do so in a way that's perfectly collision free. For example, you can update a postgres integer 1000s of times per second, sequentially, and 100s of 1000s of times per second if you allow for gaps/ unordered sequencing. The reason to choose a UUID is because it doesn't requir…

Database "sequence" types that are used to create integer IDs often no not make any guarantees about being gap-free. This can be a problem for people who don't realize this, and use them for something that is legally required to be gap-free, such as invoice numbers in some jurisdictions.

Unguessability is a nice layer to have in your security strategy, especially if you're passing IDs to and from a web page, but if that's all you rely on you're not doing enough.

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