Attla ULID

A PHP port of ulid/javascript with some minor improvements.

Universally Unique Lexicographically Sortable Identifier

UUID can be suboptimal for many uses-cases because:

• It isn't the most character efficient way of encoding 128 bits of randomness
• UUID v1/v2 is impractical in many environments, as it requires access to a unique, stable MAC address
• UUID v3/v5 requires a unique seed and produces randomly distributed IDs, which can cause fragmentation in many data structures
• UUID v4 provides no other information than randomness which can cause fragmentation in many data structures

Instead, herein is proposed ULID:

• 128-bit compatibility with UUID
• 1.21e+24 unique ULIDs per millisecond
• Lexicographically sortable!
• Canonically encoded as a 26 character string, as opposed to the 36 character UUID
• Uses Crockford's base32 for better efficiency and readability (5 bits per character)
• Case insensitive
• No special characters (URL safe)
• Monotonic sort order (correctly detects and handles the same millisecond)

You can read more here

What are the benefits?

1. With distributed systems you can be pretty confident that the primary key’s will never collide.
2. When building a large scale application when an auto increment primary key is not ideal.
3. It makes replication trivial (as opposed to int’s, which makes it REALLY hard)
4. Safe enough doesn’t show the user that you are getting information by id, for example https://example.com/item/10

Installation

composer require attla/ulid

Usage

use Attla\Ulid\Factory as UlidFactory;

$ulid = UlidFactory::generate();
echo $ulid; // 01B8KYR6G8BC61CE8R6K2T16HY
echo $ulid->generate(); // 01B8KYR6G8BC61CE8R6K2T16HZ

// Or if you prefer a lowercased output
$ulid = UlidFactory::generate(true);
echo $ulid->get(); // 01b8kyr6g8bc61ce8r6k2t16hy

// If you need the timestamp from an ULID instance
$ulid = UlidFactory::generate();
echo $ulid->toTimestamp(); // 1561622862

// You can also generate a ULID for a specific UNIX-time in milliseconds
$ulid = UlidFactory::fromTimestamp(1593048767015);
// or with a lower cased output: $ulid = UlidFactory::fromTimestamp(1593048767015, true);
echo $ulid->toString(); // 01EBMHP6H7TT1Q4B7CA018K5MQ

Use the methods get() or toString() to get the ULID as a string on ULID instances.

Migrations

When using the migration you should change $table->increments('id') or $table->id() to:

$table->ulid();

Simply, the schema seems something like this.

Schema::create('items', function (Blueprint $table) {
  $table->ulid();
  ....
  ....
  $table->timestamps();
});

If the related model is using an ULID, the column type should reflect that also.

Schema::create('items', function (Blueprint $table) {
  $table->ulid();
  ....
  // related model that uses ULID
  $table->foreignUlid('category_id');
  ....
  $table->timestamps();
});

The ULID blueprint parameter is optional. But below is an example of how to use it.

Schema::create('categories', function (Blueprint $table) {
  $table->ulid($ulidLength);
  ....
  // related model that uses ULID
  $table->foreignUlid($column, $foreignColumn, $foreignTable, $ulidLength);
  ....
  $table->timestamps();
});

Models

To set up a model to use ULID, simply use the HasUlid trait.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Attla\Ulid\HasUlid;

class Item extends Model
{
  use HasUlid;
}

Controller

When you create a new instance of a model which uses ULIDs, this package will automatically add ULID as id of the model.

// 'HasUlid' trait will automatically generate and assign id field.
$item = Item::create(['name' => 'Awesome item']);
echo $item->id;
// 01brh9q9amqp7mt7xqqb6b5k58

Testing

composer test

Benchmark

composer benchmark

License

This package is licensed under the MIT license © Octha.