Generate a UUID/GUID in Go (Golang)

UUID also known as GUID is a 16 byte or 128-bit number. It is meant to uniquely identify something. Some of the properties of UUID are

• UUID is likely to be different from any other UUID generated. In fact, there will be .00000006 chance that two UUID will be the same in case you were to generate 10 trillion UUID

• UUID doesn’t depend upon any central server for their generation

• UUID is represented as 32 hexadecimal digits(Base 16) displayed in 5 parts separated by hyphens. The form is 8-4-4-4-12. So there are a total of 36 characters which include 32 hexadecimal and 4 hyphens. Below is one sample

705e4dcb-3ecd-24f3-3a35-3e926e4bded5

There are different libraries available for generating the UUID. Let’s see two libraries which can be used to generate UUID

https://github.com/google/uuid

Code:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "strings"
    "github.com/google/uuid"
)

func main() {
    uuidWithHyphen := uuid.New()
    fmt.Println(uuidWithHyphen)
    uuid := strings.Replace(uuidWithHyphen.String(), "-", "", -1)
    fmt.Println(uuid)
}

Output:

cda6498a-235d-4f7e-ae19-661d41bc154c
cda6498a235d4f7eae19661d41bc154c

https://github.com/pborman/uuid

Code

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"strings"

	"github.com/pborman/uuid"
)

func main() {
	uuidWithHyphen := uuid.NewRandom()
	fmt.Println(uuidWithHyphen)
	uuid := strings.Replace(uuidWithHyphen.String(), "-", "", -1)
	fmt.Println(uuid)
}

Output:

cda6498a-235d-4f7e-ae19-661d41bc154c
cda6498a235d4f7eae19661d41bc154c