How to Generate Unique Integer IDs for Django Models Without Global Uniqueness?

How to Replace Primary Key with a Unique Integer for a Specific Table in Django

In Django applications, the default primary key is an auto-incremented integer, which may be visible to external users through URLs. To protect this information, a common practice is to hash the primary key. However, this method may require frequent hashing and unhashing, which can be inefficient.

Solution

A better approach is to generate a unique integer that is not globally unique but only unique within a specific table. This can be achieved using a combination of a timestamp and a random component:

Python Code for Generating IDs

Django Model

Advantages

• Unique within a table, reducing exposure of sensitive information.
• Generates short IDs, minimizing URL length.
• Avoids hashing overhead during read/write operations.

Additional Notes

• START_TIME marks the start of the timestamp range to prevent conflicts.
• reverse_id allows for easy conversion from ID back to timestamp, facilitating tracking of creation times if needed.
• This approach is similar to the ID generation used by Instagram, providing a scalable and efficient solution.

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