Re: [RFC] Make uniqid() more unique

On 9/9/16 4:36 AM, Arvids Godjuks wrote:

It's also useful in other cases, where using a full blown true random source is just overkill.

Users should not hesitate to use random_bytes() or php_random_bytes() or any of the functions that use them.

For example, my recent usage was to use the result of uniqid('', true) as a few parameters in URL's instead of plain numeric ID. Client just wanted to users can't do a +1 and see someone else's result page that might have a different text or a different campaign even. And I do need to generate those id's in bursts - 200 to 600 id's in a single action, I would imagine generating 600 random strings of ~20 char length can be hard on the source of the randomness, may even deplete it.

It is not possible to deplete this source of randomness.

And I expect the numbers to grow. So, deprecating it I think is really an overreaction. It's a handy tool. It can be used to generate filenames too, and a lot of other stuff. My thoughts are - improve it. Yes, the standard uniqid() is a bit too short, I have never used it without the second "true" parameter and that dot in the middle of the string is annoying - I had to strip it out every use case I had.