ZUID Specification

Zesty Unique Identifiers (ZUID) ‘/zoo ids/’ are used to label each Zesty.io created resource from content to users to media to content fields etc. everything has a ZUID. ZUID are used for data referencing in the user interfaces and rest APIs. ZUIDs are also bound to Audit Trail Logs in the system.

A ZUID is a string
A ZUID is typically 15-20 characters in length, but may be up to 50 characters
A ZUID contains 3 components, separated by hyphens/dashes
A ZUID should contain all lowercase alpha characters

Example ZUID:

structure: component1-component2-component3
lengths: maxlen5-maxlen10-maxlen35

e.g. 1-1b123a2f0-qw2n4

Component 1: Entity Prefix

Is an integer (ultimately stored as part of a string)
Limited to 5 characters.

These string integers are static representations of specific entity types and are provided in each library as some form of constant.

Component 2: Time Encoded as a String

Can NOT be seconds based measurement. This is not precise enough for unique hashes.
Must be 10 characters
Encoded as hexidecimal string like d0f1b38ad3

Example:

Date (and time):
2018-03-23 14:36:18.643025 -0700 PDT m=+0.000811554

In nano seconds:
1521840978643025000

As hex:
"d0f1b38ad3"

Component 3: A Random Alphanumeric String

This is a random alphanumeric string.
Minimum of 6 character length.
Maximum of 35 characters length.
It randomly selects from the character set bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxz0123456789
It does not use vowels to avoid forming words in IDs

Libraries

ZUID Entity Prefixes

See prefixes.json for ZUID Entity Prefixes encoded as JSON. This file is the definitive source for prefixes. All other libraries should conform to it.