zesty-io / zuid-specification

Zesty.io Unique Identifier Specification

ZUID Specification

Zesty Unique Identifiers (ZUID) '/zoo ids/' are used to label each Zesty.io created resource from content to users to media to content fields etc. everything has a ZUID. ZUID are used for data referencing in the user interfaces and rest APIs. ZUIDs are also bound to Audit Trail Logs in the system.

• A ZUID is a string
• A ZUID is typically 15-20 characters in length, but may be up to 50 characters
• A ZUID contains 3 components, separated by hyphens/dashes
• A ZUID should contain all lowercase alpha characters

Example ZUID:

structure: component1-component2-component3
lengths: maxlen5-maxlen10-maxlen35

e.g. 1-1b123a2f0-qw2n4

Component 1: Entity Prefix

• Is an integer (ultimately stored as part of a string)
• Limited to 5 characters.

These string integers are static representations of specific entity types and are provided in each library as some form of constant.

Component 2: Time Encoded as a String

• Can NOT be seconds based measurement. This is not precise enough for unique hashes.
• Must be 10 characters
• Encoded as hexidecimal string like d0f1b38ad3

Example:

Date (and time):
2018-03-23 14:36:18.643025 -0700 PDT m=+0.000811554

In nano seconds:
1521840978643025000

As hex:
"d0f1b38ad3"

Component 3: A Random Alphanumeric String

• This is a random alphanumeric string.
• Minimum of 6 character length.
• Maximum of 35 characters length.
• It randomly selects from the character set bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxz0123456789
• It does not use vowels to avoid forming words in IDs

Libraries

• zuid-js
• zuid-php
• zuid-mysql

ZUID Entity Prefixes

See prefixes.json for ZUID Entity Prefixes encoded as JSON. This file is the definitive source for prefixes. All other libraries should conform to it.