21.20. uuid — UUID objects according to RFC 4122

Source code: Lib/uuid.py

This module provides immutable UUID objects (the UUID class) and the functions uuid1(), uuid3(), uuid4(), uuid5() for generating version 1, 3, 4, and 5 UUIDs as specified in RFC 4122.

If all you want is a unique ID, you should probably call uuid1() or uuid4(). Note that uuid1() may compromise privacy since it creates a UUID containing the computer’s network address. uuid4() creates a random UUID.

class uuid.UUID(hex=None, bytes=None, bytes_le=None, fields=None, int=None, version=None)

Create a UUID from either a string of 32 hexadecimal digits, a string of 16 bytes in big-endian order as the bytes argument, a string of 16 bytes in little-endian order as the bytes_le argument, a tuple of six integers (32-bit time_low, 16-bit time_mid, 16-bit time_hi_version, 8-bit clock_seq_hi_variant, 8-bit clock_seq_low, 48-bit node) as the fields argument, or a single 128-bit integer as the int argument. When a string of hex digits is given, curly braces, hyphens, and a URN prefix are all optional. For example, these expressions all yield the same UUID:

UUID('{12345678-1234-5678-1234-567812345678}')
UUID('12345678123456781234567812345678')
UUID('urn:uuid:12345678-1234-5678-1234-567812345678')
UUID(bytes=b'\x12\x34\x56\x78'*4)
UUID(bytes_le=b'\x78\x56\x34\x12\x34\x12\x78\x56' +
              b'\x12\x34\x56\x78\x12\x34\x56\x78')
UUID(fields=(0x12345678, 0x1234, 0x5678, 0x12, 0x34, 0x567812345678))
UUID(int=0x12345678123456781234567812345678)

Exactly one of hex, bytes, bytes_le, fields, or int must be given. The version argument is optional; if given, the resulting UUID will have its variant and version number set according to RFC 4122, overriding bits in the given hex, bytes, bytes_le, fields, or int.

Comparison of UUID objects are made by way of comparing their UUID.int attributes. Comparison with a non-UUID object raises a TypeError.

str(uuid) returns a string in the form 12345678-1234-5678-1234-567812345678 where the 32 hexadecimal digits represent the UUID.

UUID instances have these read-only attributes:

UUID.bytes

The UUID as a 16-byte string (containing the six integer fields in big-endian byte order).

UUID.bytes_le

The UUID as a 16-byte string (with time_low, time_mid, and time_hi_version in little-endian byte order).

UUID.fields

A tuple of the six integer fields of the UUID, which are also available as six individual attributes and two derived attributes:

Field Meaning
time_low the first 32 bits of the UUID
time_mid the next 16 bits of the UUID
time_hi_version the next 16 bits of the UUID
clock_seq_hi_variant the next 8 bits of the UUID
clock_seq_low the next 8 bits of the UUID
node the last 48 bits of the UUID
time the 60-bit timestamp
clock_seq the 14-bit sequence number
UUID.hex

The UUID as a 32-character hexadecimal string.

UUID.int

The UUID as a 128-bit integer.

UUID.urn

The UUID as a URN as specified in RFC 4122.

UUID.variant

The UUID variant, which determines the internal layout of the UUID. This will be one of the constants RESERVED_NCS, RFC_4122, RESERVED_MICROSOFT, or RESERVED_FUTURE.

UUID.version

The UUID version number (1 through 5, meaningful only when the variant is RFC_4122).

The uuid module defines the following functions:

uuid.getnode()

Get the hardware address as a 48-bit positive integer. The first time this runs, it may launch a separate program, which could be quite slow. If all attempts to obtain the hardware address fail, we choose a random 48-bit number with its eighth bit set to 1 as recommended in RFC 4122. “Hardware address” means the MAC address of a network interface, and on a machine with multiple network interfaces the MAC address of any one of them may be returned.

uuid.uuid1(node=None, clock_seq=None)

Generate a UUID from a host ID, sequence number, and the current time. If node is not given, getnode() is used to obtain the hardware address. If clock_seq is given, it is used as the sequence number; otherwise a random 14-bit sequence number is chosen.

uuid.uuid3(namespace, name)

Generate a UUID based on the MD5 hash of a namespace identifier (which is a UUID) and a name (which is a string).

uuid.uuid4()

Generate a random UUID.

uuid.uuid5(namespace, name)

Generate a UUID based on the SHA-1 hash of a namespace identifier (which is a UUID) and a name (which is a string).

The uuid module defines the following namespace identifiers for use with uuid3() or uuid5().

uuid.NAMESPACE_DNS

When this namespace is specified, the name string is a fully-qualified domain name.

uuid.NAMESPACE_URL

When this namespace is specified, the name string is a URL.

uuid.NAMESPACE_OID

When this namespace is specified, the name string is an ISO OID.

uuid.NAMESPACE_X500

When this namespace is specified, the name string is an X.500 DN in DER or a text output format.

The uuid module defines the following constants for the possible values of the variant attribute:

uuid.RESERVED_NCS

Reserved for NCS compatibility.

uuid.RFC_4122

Specifies the UUID layout given in RFC 4122.

uuid.RESERVED_MICROSOFT

Reserved for Microsoft compatibility.

uuid.RESERVED_FUTURE

Reserved for future definition.

See also

RFC 4122 - A Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID) URN Namespace
This specification defines a Uniform Resource Name namespace for UUIDs, the internal format of UUIDs, and methods of generating UUIDs.

21.20.1. Example

Here are some examples of typical usage of the uuid module:

>>> import uuid

>>> # make a UUID based on the host ID and current time
>>> uuid.uuid1()
UUID('a8098c1a-f86e-11da-bd1a-00112444be1e')

>>> # make a UUID using an MD5 hash of a namespace UUID and a name
>>> uuid.uuid3(uuid.NAMESPACE_DNS, 'python.org')
UUID('6fa459ea-ee8a-3ca4-894e-db77e160355e')

>>> # make a random UUID
>>> uuid.uuid4()
UUID('16fd2706-8baf-433b-82eb-8c7fada847da')

>>> # make a UUID using a SHA-1 hash of a namespace UUID and a name
>>> uuid.uuid5(uuid.NAMESPACE_DNS, 'python.org')
UUID('886313e1-3b8a-5372-9b90-0c9aee199e5d')

>>> # make a UUID from a string of hex digits (braces and hyphens ignored)
>>> x = uuid.UUID('{00010203-0405-0607-0809-0a0b0c0d0e0f}')

>>> # convert a UUID to a string of hex digits in standard form
>>> str(x)
'00010203-0405-0607-0809-0a0b0c0d0e0f'

>>> # get the raw 16 bytes of the UUID
>>> x.bytes
b'\x00\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08\t\n\x0b\x0c\r\x0e\x0f'

>>> # make a UUID from a 16-byte string
>>> uuid.UUID(bytes=x.bytes)
UUID('00010203-0405-0607-0809-0a0b0c0d0e0f')