How to Create a UUID in JavaScript

Discussion

1. Christian Bettinger

   Unfortunately, browser support is very patchy so far…
• Chris Zuber

  Plenty of shims/polyills are available.

  From https://stackoverflow.com/questions/105034/how-to-create-a-guid-uuid

  if (! (crypto.randomUUID instanceof Function)) {
    crypto.randomUUID = function uuidv4() {
      return ([1e7]+-1e3+-4e3+-8e3+-1e11).replace(/[018]/g, c =>
        (c ^ crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint8Array(1))[0] & 15 >> c / 4).toString(16)
    );
  }
  }
  
2. zakius

   V8 is not equal to JavaScript
3. Prakash Chokalingam

   Yes, the article should have included ‘node’ or ‘v8’ in the title.
4. lemirij798

   Probably worth mentioning this doesn’t work in Safari or Firefox and is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track.
5. rj

   Are there any other libraries that generate uuid other than crypto in js?
• Christian Bettinger

  https://github.com/uuidjs/uuid
• tim

  the uuid library
  https://www.npmjs.com/package/uuid
6. Florian

   A note on browser support would be useful ;) But it‘s great to see that we can soon use it just like that.
7. Chris Zuber

   Chromium (including Edge): >=92
   Firefox: >=95 (Release notes how I discovered the API)
   Safari: :(
   IE: No!

   shim:

   if (! (crypto.randomUUID instanceof Function)) {
     function uuidv4() {
       return ([1e7]+-1e3+-4e3+-8e3+-1e11).replace(/[018]/g, c =>
         (c ^ crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint8Array(1))[0] & 15 >> c / 4).toString(16)
       );
     }
   }
   
• Chris Zuber

  Turns out I cannot edit comments…

  if (! (crypto.randomUUID instanceof Function)) {
    crypto.randomUUID = function uuidv4() {
      return ([1e7]+-1e3+-4e3+-8e3+-1e11).replace(/[018]/g, c =>
        (c ^ crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint8Array(1))[0] & 15 >> c / 4).toString(16)
      );
    }
  }