Random Unique ID

This gem will generate a random unique id for your active record records that you can use instead of their actual ID for all external interactions with users. The goal is for you to be able to hide how many records you have, for business purposes, but also to make IDs non-predictable.

This gem is built to work with Ruby 1.9, 2.0, 2.1 as well as with Rails 3.2 and 4.0. All of these cases are continuously tested for.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "random_unique_id"

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install random_unique_id

Usage

The usage is very simple. For each record where you want to have a random id generated, add the following line to the class:

has_random_unique_id

For example:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_random_unique_id
end

You need to also add a column, called rid of type string/varchar. It is recommended that you also add a unique index on that column, for example:

def up
  add_column :posts, :rid, :string
  add_index :posts, :rid, :unique
end

The method to_param will be overridden to return the rid instead of the id. The method belongs_to gets extended to define _rid methods similar to the _id method, like: blog_rid and blog_rid=. If you don't want to define those pass define_rid_method as false, for example:

class Post
  belongs_to :blog, define_rid_method: false
end

Classes that have rids also get a method called populate_random_unique_ids to help you populate the rid of existing records. For example:

def up
  add_column :posts, :rid, :string
  add_index :posts, :rid, :unique
  say_with_time "Post.populate_random_unique_ids" do
    Post.reset_column_information
    Post.populate_random_unique_ids { print "."}
  end
end

Changelog

Version 0.2.0

• Added method populate_random_unique_ids.
• Improved documentation
• Started testing with Ruby 2.1.

Version 0.1.0

• Initial release of the code extracted from Watu.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am "Add some feature")
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request