Is there a method to generate a standard 128bit GUID (UUID) on the Mac?

Question

Is there a built in function equivalent to .NET\'s

Guid.NewGuid();

in Cocoa?

My desire is to produce a string along the lines of

Answer 1

Some code:

For a string UUID, the following class method should do the trick:

+(NSString*)UUIDString {
    CFUUIDRef theUUID = CFUUIDCreate(NULL);
    CFStringRef string = CFUUIDCreateString(NULL, theUUID);
    CFRelease(theUUID);
    return [(NSString *)string autorelease];
}

if you really want the bytes (not the string):

+(CFUUIDBytes)UUIDBytes {
    CFUUIDRef theUUID = CFUUIDCreate(NULL);
    CFUUIDBytes bytes = CFUUIDGetUUIDBytes(theUUID);
    CFRelease(theUUID);
    return bytes;
}

where CFUUIDBytes is a struct of the UUID bytes.