Friendly Readable ID Strings

One often needs unique ID strings to tag processes, threads, files or anything else that might be created in quantity. Traditionally these are created based on PIDs or similar system values. But it is not easy to visually recognise these strings, which makes debugging more difficult than it need be. This recipe creates readable and pronounceable ID strings that are much easier to work with.

I have submitted this to the Python Cookbook but thought I would write it up here as well. The code is freely available under the Python license.

The inspiration for this recipe is the fact that I hate debugging systems by trying to track IDs that look like "kSbT73oQ". It's much easier on the brain to scan strings like "levokosi". These are also pronounceable, so one can communicate with other members on the development team. "Hey dude, what's up with file sadofabi -- it appears to be locked."

I many cases one does not need billions of IDs, so restricting the strings to alternating consonants and vowels, and a reasonable length, gives us plenty of scope. The function GetFriendlyID() generates these of length 8, using the built-in Python pseudo-random generator. If this is not good enough, increase the length or use a more random module. But before you do so, realise that the algorithm here allows over 40 million unique strings.

(Of course it is sometimes useful to have ID strings based on PIDs or whatever, so they can be tied back to the originating process. In those cases this recipe is not applicable.)

The GetUniqueFriendlyID() function sketches out a typical implementation, where we want to ensure the generated IDs are, in fact, unique.

The module-level code does a simple test so we can inspect some resulting strings. Baby name generator, anyone?

from random import choice

def GetFriendlyID():
    """
        Create an ID string we can recognise.
        (Think Italian or Japanese or Native American.)
    """
    v = 'aeiou'
    c = 'bdfghklmnprstvw'
 
    return ''.join([choice(v if i%2 else c) for i in range(8)])

def GetUniqueFriendlyID(used_ids):
    """
        Return an ID that is not in our list of used IDs.
    """
    # trying infinitely is a bad idea
    LIMIT = 1000

    count = 0
    while count < LIMIT:
        id = GetFriendlyID()
        if id not in used_ids:
            break
        count += 1
        id = ''
    return id

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from sets import Set

    print 'some sample unique IDs:'
    used_ids = Set()
    for i in xrange(50):
        id = GetUniqueFriendlyID(used_ids)
        if not id:
            print 'something broke'
            break
        used_ids.add(id)
        print id

Edit 10 August: Fixed resetting ID string in GetUniqueFriendlyID(). Fixed import. Changed implementation example to use a set to store IDs.

Edit 8 August: I've simplified the algorithm into what is basically a one-liner. This version requires Python 2.5 as it uses conditional expressions.

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