Generate a UUID in JavaScript

How to Generate a UUID in JavaScript

Although the JavaScript language itself does not have built-in support for generating a UUID or GUID, there are plenty of quality 3rd party, open-source libraries that you can use.

The JavaScript library we recommend for generating UUIDs is called (unsurprisingly), uuid. It can generate version 1, 3, 4 and 5 UUIDs.

Installing the uuid Package

To get started with the library, you'll need to install it. If you're working in a project with a package.json file, run this command to add it to the dependencies list:

% npm install uuid

Or if you want to install it globally on your computer, use this command:

% npm install -g uuid

Generating UUIDs

With the uuid library installed, you can now use it in your JavaScript code.

Here's how you can generate a version 4 UUID in JavaScript with the uuid library:

import {v4 as uuidv4} from 'uuid';

let myuuid = uuidv4();

console.out('Your UUID is: ' + myuuid);

Explanation

• Line #1 imports the version 4 UUID function. There are also functions available for generating version 1, 3 and 5 UUIDs. Note that this is the ES6 module import syntax.
• Line #3 generates the UUID and saves it in the variable, myuuid.
• The output from line #5 will be something like:

  Your UUID is: c32d8b45-92fe-44f6-8b61-42c2107dfe87
  

The uuid library has a number of other functions, such as for converting from a string representation of a UUID into a byte array and back. You can read more about the JavaScript uuid library on it's GitHub page.

How can we improve this page? Let us know!