Nano ID for MySQL / MariaDB

Inspired by the following parent project: ai/nanoid

A tiny, secure, URL-friendly, unique string ID generator for MySQL / MariaDB.

“An amazing level of senseless perfectionism, which is simply impossible not to respect.”

Small. Just a simple MySQL/MariaDB function.
Safe. It uses hardware random generator. Can be used in clusters.
Short IDs. It uses a larger alphabet than UUID (A-Za-z0-9_-). So ID size was reduced from 36 to 21 symbols.
Portable. Nano ID was ported to over 20 programming languages.

Use

SELECT nanoid(); -- creates an id, with the defaults of the created nanoid() function.
SELECT nanoid_simple(15); -- size parameter set to return 15 digit ids only
SELECT nanoid_custom(3, 'abcdefghij'); -- custom size and alphabet parameters defined. nanoid() generates ids concerning them

Getting Started

Requirements

MySQL 5.7.4 or newer
MariaDB 10.10.0 or newer

Execute the file nanoid.sql to create the nanoid(), nanoid_simple() and nanoid_custom() functions on your defined schema. The nanoid() functions will only be available in the specific database where you run the SQL code provided.

Manually create the function in each database: You can connect to each database and create the function. This function can be created manually or through a script if you have many databases. Remember to manage updates to the function. If you change the function in one database, those changes will only be reflected in the other databases if you update each function.

Auto ID Generation with Triggers

This guide shows how to set up triggers for auto-generating unique IDs using our function nanoid().

Prerequisites

You should have already created the function nanoid() that generates unique identifiers.

Creating a Trigger

A trigger auto-executes certain instructions on database events. Here's an example for an INSERT operation on a table mytable:

DELIMITER $$

CREATE TRIGGER generate_nanoid_mytable
BEFORE INSERT ON mytable
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
    IF NEW.id IS NULL OR NEW.id = '' THEN
        SET NEW.id = nanoid();
    END IF;
END;

$$

DELIMITER ;

This trigger auto-generates a unique ID via nanoid() when a new row is inserted into mytable.

Triggers for Multiple Tables

For multiple tables, create a unique trigger for each:

DELIMITER $$

CREATE TRIGGER generate_nanoid_mytable1
BEFORE INSERT ON mytable1
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
    IF NEW.id IS NULL OR NEW.id = '' THEN
        SET NEW.id = nanoid();
    END IF;
END;

$$

CREATE TRIGGER generate_nanoid_mytable2
BEFORE INSERT ON mytable2
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
    IF NEW.id IS NULL OR NEW.id = '' THEN
        SET NEW.id = nanoid();
    END IF;
END;

$$

DELIMITER ;

Replace mytable1, mytable2, and nanoid() with your actual table names and function name you want to use.

Using PostgreSQL?

If you're using PostgreSQL and you found this library helpful, we have a similar library for PostgreSQL too! Check out our Nano ID for PostgreSQL repository to utilize the same capabilities in your PostgreSQL databases.

Authors 🖥️

Patrick Bösch - Initial work - itsmefox
Nikola Stanković - Initial work - nik-sta

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project. 💕

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

viascom / nanoid-mysql-mariadb