TypeID Elixir

A type-safe, K-sortable, globally unique identifier inspired by Stripe IDs

TypeIDs are a modern, type-safe, globally unique identifier based on the upcoming UUIDv7 standard. They provide a ton of nice properties that make them a great choice as the primary identifiers for your data in a database, APIs, and distributed systems. Read more about TypeIDs in their spec.

Installation

The package can be installed from hex by adding typeid_elixir to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:typeid_elixir, "~> 0.5.0"}
  ]
end

Spec

The original TypeID spec is defined here.

Usage with Ecto

TypeID implements the Ecto.ParameterizedType behaviour so you can use TypeIDs as fields in your Ecto schemas.

defmodule MyApp.Accounts.User do
  use Ecto.Schema

  @primary_key {:id, TypeID, autogenerate: true, prefix: "acct", type: :binary}
  @foreign_key_type TypeID

  # ...
end

Underlying types

TypeIDs can be stored as :string, :binary_id, or :binary. :string will store the entire TypeID including the prefix. :binary and :binary_id store only the UUID portion and require a :uuid or :binary column. :binary_id will use UUIDv4 (non K-sortable), whereas :binary will use UUIDv7, so :binary is recommended over :binary_id for that reason.

Default type

The type used can be set globally in the application config.

config :typeid_elixir,
  default_type: :binary