How to auto generate uuid in cassandra CQL 3 command line

Question

Just learning cassandra, is there a way to insert a UUID using CQL, ie

create table stuff (uid uuid primary key, name varchar);
insert into stuff (name) valu         


        

Answer 1

You can with time uuids (type 1 UUID) using the now() function e.g.

insert into stuff (uid, name) values(now(), 'my name');

Works with uid or timeuuid. It generates a "guaranteed unique" UID value, which also contains the timestamp so is sortable by time.

There isn't such a function for type 4 UUIDs though.

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UPDATE: This note pertains to older versions of Cassandra. For newer versions, see below.