YouTube-like GUID

Question

Is it possible to generate short GUID like in YouTube (N7Et6c9nL9w)?

How can it be done? I want to use it in web app.

Answer 1

This id is probably not globally unique. GUID's should be globally unique as they include elements which should not occur elsewhere (the MAC address of the machine generating the ID, the time the ID was generated, etc.)

If what you need is an ID that is unique within your application, use a number fountain - perhaps encoding the value as a hexadecimal number. Every time you need an id, grab it from the number fountain.

If you have multiple servers allocating id's, you could grab a range of numbers (a few tens or thousands depending on how quickly you're allocating ids) and that should do the job. an 8 digit hex number will give you 4 billion ids - but your first id's will be a lot shorter.