OrderId

If you're tired of creating a kinda unique ids based on a timestamp, look no further. OrderId will create a hash-looking id strings that are nice and decodable back to a timestamp. 3I7BX-6WERP-CD4 is much better than 1661113911.978755.

Basically, it takes a current timestamp and translates it to a string of upper-cased characters split in groups of XX chars separated by a custom separator-char.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'order_id'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install OrderId

OrderId.generate # G3RRY-ZMIHR-CCZ3P-FGXM
OrderId.get_time('G3RRY-ZMIHR-CCZ3P-FGXM') # 2022-08-21 20:33:18 +0000

OrderId takes four optional parameters:

• decimal_places: number of decimal places in a timestamp. Makes no sense if it's over 20, common sense is 10 or 12.
• base: base number system. Defaults to 36, but any arbitrary base is a good place to obfuscate your ids. E.g . OrderId.generate(base: 12) # 12616-51312-6751B-A87B1-72235-444
• separator: a separator char. Defaults to - but can be '/' or any non-digit and non-word character
• group_length: a number of chars in groups separated by a separator. Defaults to 4. OrderId.generate(base: 12, length: 4, group_length: 8) # "1A434285-32526"

If you know the parameters which the Id has been generated with you can restore a timestamp the Id was based on.

OrderId.get_time('1A434285-32526', base: 12, decimal_places: 4) # 2022-08-21 20:49:34 +0000

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/austerlitz/OrderId. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Everyone interacting in the OrderId project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.