Re: Unique Object Instance ID..?

Colin Guthrie wrote:

'Twas brillig, and Nathan Rixham at 10/01/09 23:31 did gyre and gimble:

all I need is a completely unique id for each object instance that can never be repeated at any time, even in a multiserver environment (and without using any kind of incremented value from a db table or third party app) thoughts, ideas, recommendations?

While it's not guaranteed to be unique the general technique used in these situations is to use a UUID. The chances of a clash are slim (2x10^38 ish combinations). You can generate a uuid via mysql "SELECT UUID()" or via the PHP Pecl extension php-uuid. The other way of doing it would be to insert a row into a database row with an auto-increment field and use the value of that auto-incrment field as your identifier (SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID() in mysql or via the db layers API). HTHs Col

cheers for the input; uuid it has to be I guess; don't want it reliant on any third party software or db so pecl is out, as is mysql - looks like I'm going to have to (and probably enjoy) making a uuid function to generate type 4 random uuids. only other thought is to combine all the instance variables, hash the combination of them and save that together with a timestamp.. considering