How to create a GUID/UUID using iOS

Question

I want to be able to create a GUID/UUID on the iPhone and iPad.

The intention is to be able to create keys for distributed data that are all unique. Is there a way to do this with the iOS SDK?

Answer 1

[[UIDevice currentDevice] uniqueIdentifier]

Returns the Unique ID of your iPhone.

EDIT: -[UIDevice uniqueIdentifier] is now deprecated and apps are being rejected from the App Store for using it. The method below is now the preferred approach.

If you need to create several UUID, just use this method (with ARC):

+ (NSString *)GetUUID
{
  CFUUIDRef theUUID = CFUUIDCreate(NULL);
  CFStringRef string = CFUUIDCreateString(NULL, theUUID);
  CFRelease(theUUID);
  return (__bridge NSString *)string;
}

EDIT: Jan, 29 2014: If you're targeting iOS 6 or later, you can now use the much simpler method:

NSString *UUID = [[NSUUID UUID] UUIDString];

Answer 2

Here is the simple code I am using, compliant with ARC.

+(NSString *)getUUID
{
    CFUUIDRef newUniqueId = CFUUIDCreate(kCFAllocatorDefault);
    NSString * uuidString = (__bridge_transfer NSString*)CFUUIDCreateString(kCFAllocatorDefault, newUniqueId);
    CFRelease(newUniqueId);

    return uuidString;
}

Answer 3

In iOS 6 you can easily use:

NSUUID  *UUID = [NSUUID UUID];
NSString* stringUUID = [UUID UUIDString];

More details in Apple's Documentations

Answer 4

Reviewing the Apple Developer documentation I found the CFUUID object is available on the iPhone OS 2.0 and later.

Answer 5

The simplest technique is to use NSString *uuid = [[NSProcessInfo processInfo] globallyUniqueString]. See the NSProcessInfo class reference.

Answer 6

In Swift:

var uuid: String = NSUUID().UUIDString
println("uuid: \(uuid)")

Answer 7

In Swift 3.0

var uuid = UUID().uuidString

Answer 8

I've uploaded my simple but fast implementation of a Guid class for ObjC here: obj-c GUID

Guid* guid = [Guid randomGuid];
NSLog("%@", guid.description);

It can parse to and from various string formats as well.