Generating 8-character only UUIDs

Solution 1:

It is not possible since a UUID is a 16-byte number per definition. But of course, you can generate 8-character long unique strings (see the other answers).

Also be careful with generating longer UUIDs and substring-ing them, since some parts of the ID may contain fixed bytes (e.g. this is the case with MAC, DCE and MD5 UUIDs).

Solution 2:

You can try RandomStringUtils class from apache.commons:

import org.apache.commons.lang3.RandomStringUtils;

final int SHORT_ID_LENGTH = 8;

// all possible unicode characters
String shortId = RandomStringUtils.random(SHORT_ID_LENGTH);

Please keep in mind, that it will contain all possible characters which is neither URL nor human friendly.

So check out other methods too:

// HEX: 0-9, a-f. For example: 6587fddb, c0f182c1
shortId = RandomStringUtils.random(8, "0123456789abcdef"); 

// a-z, A-Z. For example: eRkgbzeF, MFcWSksx
shortId = RandomStringUtils.randomAlphabetic(8); 

// 0-9. For example: 76091014, 03771122
shortId = RandomStringUtils.randomNumeric(8); 

// a-z, A-Z, 0-9. For example: WRMcpIk7, s57JwCVA
shortId = RandomStringUtils.randomAlphanumeric(8); 

As others said probability of id collision with smaller id can be significant. Check out how birthday problem applies to your case. You can find nice explanation how to calculate approximation in this answer.

Solution 3:

First: Even the unique IDs generated by java UUID.randomUUID or .net GUID are not 100% unique. Especialy UUID.randomUUID is "only" a 128 bit (secure) random value. So if you reduce it to 64 bit, 32 bit, 16 bit (or even 1 bit) then it becomes simply less unique.

So it is at least a risk based decisions, how long your uuid must be.

Second: I assume that when you talk about "only 8 characters" you mean a String of 8 normal printable characters.

If you want a unique string with length 8 printable characters you could use a base64 encoding. This means 6bit per char, so you get 48bit in total (possible not very unique - but maybe it is ok for you application)

So the way is simple: create a 6 byte random array

 SecureRandom rand;
 // ...
 byte[] randomBytes = new byte[16];
 rand.nextBytes(randomBytes);

And then transform it to a Base64 String, for example by org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64

BTW: it depends on your application if there is a better way to create "uuid" then by random. (If you create a the UUIDs only once per second, then it is a good idea to add a time stamp) (By the way: if you combine (xor) two random values, the result is always at least as random as the most random of the both).