#uuid #unique #human-readable #id #shortid #uuid-v4

bin+lib uuid-readable-rs

Easy to remember unique sentences acting as UUID

6 releases

0.1.5 Aug 9, 2021
0.1.4 Aug 8, 2021

#1364 in Parser implementations

48 downloads per month
Used in liff

AGPL-3.0

530KB
34K SLoC

uuid-readable-rs

Easy to remember unique sentences acting as UUID

AGPL License crates.io Released API docs

Generate easy to remember sentences that acts as human readable UUIDs.

  • Built on UUID v4
  • Optionally pass your UUID to derive a sentence from it
  • Grammatically correct sentences
  • Easy to remember (or at least part of it)
  • Size choice (32-bit token or 128-bit token using short() or generate() respectively)

Security

This project does not mean to be crypto safe ! Don't use this as a secure random generator.

Even if we derive sentences from UUID (that are crypto safe), there can still be some collision with 2 different UUID but resulting in the same sentence.

  • 25^12 possible combinations for generate() (uses 128-bit Token)
  • 25^5 possible combinations for short() (uses 32-bit Token)

Note that the sentence generated by generate() and the original UUID form a bijection, hence no loss of entropy.

Sentence generated

For the long - aka generate() - version, a typical sentence generated by this lib looks like:

Wildon Mollie Behka the bubbler of Arecibo moaned Chavey Haney Torbart and 10 calm kingfishers

Internally this correspond to:

  • 12 bits for a name
  • 11 bits for a name
  • 14 bits for a name
  • 13 bits for a personal noun
  • 13 bits for a place
  • 10 bits for a verb
  • 12 bits for a name
  • 11 bits for a name
  • 14 bits for a name
  • 5 bits for a number
  • 6 bits for an adjective
  • 7 bits for an animal

To ensure no loss of entropy, taking the example of the verb which represents 10 bits, this means that we used a list of verbs of at least 2^10 possibilities (1024).

For the short - aka short() - version, a typical sentence looks like:

Zink recorded by 127 large armadillos

This correspond to:

  • 6 bits for a name
  • 6 bits for a verb
  • 7 bits for a number
  • 8 bits for an adjective
  • 5 bits for an animal

Since the short version is 32 bits long and is derived from a 128-bit UUID, it is not considered as secure or as random as the long version may be. It also does not form any bijection with the original UUID.

Example

use uuid::Uuid;
use uuid_readable_rs::{generate_from, short_from, generate, short, generate_inverse};

// You can define your own UUID and pass it to uuid_readable_rs like so
let uuid = Uuid::new_v4();
let sentence_128: String = generate_from(uuid);
let sentence_32: String = short_from(uuid);

// You can also get an UUID from a sentence that was previously generated
let original_uuid: Uuid = generate_inverse(sentence_128).unwrap();
assert_eq!(uuid, original_uuid);

// Or let uuid_readable_rs handle the Uuid generation
let sentence_128: String = generate();
let sentence_32: String = short();

Dependencies

~370–550KB