README.md

ECMAScript proposal: JavaScript standard library UUID

Status: Stage 1

Authors

• Benjamin Coe (@bcoe)
• Robert Kieffer (@broofa)
• Christoph Tavan (@ctavan)

Synopsis

The JavaScript standard library UUID describes an API for generating character encoded Universally Unique Identifiers (UUID) based on IETF RFC 4122, available for import in JavaScript engines.

Motivation

UUID generation is an extremely common software requirement

The uuid module on npm currently receives some 64,000,000 monthly downloads and is relied on by over 2,600,000 repositories (as of June 2019).

The ubiquitous nature of the uuid module demonstrates that UUID generation is a common requirement for JavaScript software applications, making the functionality a good candidate for the standard library.

Developers "re-inventing the wheel" is potentially harmful

Developers who have not been exposed to RFC 4122 might naturally opt to invent their own approaches to UUID generation, potentially using Math.random() (in TIFU by using Math.random() there's an in-depth discussion of why a Cryptographically-Secure-Pseudo-Random-Number-Generator (CSPRNG) should be used when generating UUIDs).

Introducing a UUID standard library, which dictates that a CSPRNG must be used, helps protect developers from security pitfalls.

Overview

The UUID standard library provides an API for generating RFC 4122 identifiers.

The default export of the UUID library is the Version 4 Algorithm, and returns the string representation (as described in RFC-4122).

// We're not yet certain as to how the API will be accessed (whether it's in the global, or a
// future built-in module), and this will be part of the investigative process as we continue
// working on the proposal.
uuid(); // "52e6953d-edbe-4953-be2e-65ed3836b2f0"

All random values in UUIDs produced by this API must be generated from a cryptographically secure source.

Out of scope

Algorithms described in RFC 4122 other than Version 4 are not initially supported.

Statistics we've collected (see analysis/README.md) indicate that the Version 4 algorithm is most widely used:

Regarding other UUID versions

While there is utility in other UUID versions, we are advocating starting with a minimal API surface that supports a large percentage of users (the string representation of Version 4 UUIDs).

If research and/or user feedback later indicates that additional functionality, such as versions 1, 3, and 5 UUIDs, would add value, this proposal does not preclude these additions.

Use cases

How do folks in the community use RFC 4122 UUIDs?

Creating unique keys for database entries

Generating fake testing data

Writing to temporary files

FAQ

What are the advantages to uuid being in the standard library?

• The uuid module is relied on by > 2,600,000 repos on GitHub (June 2019). Guaranteeing a secure, consistent, well-maintained UUID implementation provides value to millions of developers.
• The 12 kb uuid module is downloaded from npm > 62,000,000 times a month (June 2019); making it available in the standard library eventually saves TBs of bandwidth globally. If we continue to address user needs, such as uuid, with the standard library, bandwidth savings add up.

How unique are v4 UUIDs?

If you ignore the challenges involved in random number generation, then v4 UUIDs are unique enough for all but the most stringent use cases. For example, the odds of a collision among 3.3 quadrillion version 4 UUIDs (equivalent to generating a million UUIDs/second for 104 years) is roughly one in a million (p = 0.000001). Source.

That said, the quality of the random number generator is vital to uniqueness. Flawed RNG implementations have led to UUID collisions in real-world systems. It is for this reason that this spec mandates that any random numbers used come from a "cryptographically secure" source, thereby (hopefully) avoiding such issues.

Why does the standard library API treat v4 UUIDs as a default?

An analysis of popular Open Source projects that were using v1 UUIDs has shown that the majority of identified projects did not have a compelling reason for using v1 UUIDs, and with education were willing to migrate to v4 UUIDs.

We have reached out to the developers of the 6 most popular (based on watch count) actively maintained GitHub projects where this was the case and all of them accepted our pull requests.

Please refer to analysis/README.md for more information.

But aren't v1 UUIDs better because they are guaranteed to be unique?

As an oversimplification, v1 UUIDs consist of two parts: A high-precision timestamp and a node id. IETF RFC 4122 contains several requirements that are supposed to ensure that the resulting v1 UUIDs are unique.

• The timestamp has 100 nanosecond resolution and implementations are required to throw an error or stall on attempts to generate UUIDs at a rate higher than 10M/second on a single node. Realistically that's only enforceable within a single thread/process on a single host. Enforcing this across multiple processes / hosts requires non-trivial architectures that run counter to the main thesis the UUID spec: "One of the main reasons for using UUIDs is that no centralized authority is required to administer them".
• The mechanism for generating node values preferred by the RFC is to use the host system's IEEE 802 MAC address. This made sense back when the RFC was authored and MAC addresses could reasonably be expected to be unique, but this is arguably no longer the case, not with the proliferation of virtual machines and containers where MAC addresses may not be unique by design.

So in practice, modern implementations will generate a random 48 bit node value each time a process is started leaving a probability of 1 in 248 for collisions in the node part. In the unlikely event of such a collision it would take only 75 milliseconds for a duplicate v1 UUID to appear when generating UUIDs at a rate of 1M/second. So while also unlikely, just like with v4 UUIDs there is no practical guarantee that v1 UUIDs are unique.

TODO

• Identify champion to advance addition (stage-1)
• Prose outlining the problem or need and general shape of the solution (stage-1)
• Illustrative examples of usage (stage-1)
• High-level API (stage-1)
• Initial spec text (stage-2)
• Babel plugin (stage-2)
• Finalize and reviewer sign-off for spec text (stage-3)
• Test262 acceptance tests (stage-4)
• tc39/ecma262 pull request with integrated spec text (stage-4)
• Reviewer sign-off (stage-4)

References

• IETF RFC 4122
• JavaScript Standard Library Proposal
• TIFU by using Math.random()
• Cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator