typeid-unboxed

An alternative TypeScript implementation of TypeIDs, using strings for runtime representation.

TypeIDs are modern, type-safe, globally unique identifiers based on the upcoming UUIDv7 standard. They offer numerous advantages, making them an excellent choice for primary identifiers in databases, APIs, and distributed systems. Learn more about TypeIDs in their spec.

This package, typeid-unboxed, is an alternative implementation of the original TypeID concept by jetpack.io, which uses class instances at runtime. In contrast, typeid-unboxed utilizes strings in runtime while achieving type safety through branded types, offering a lightweight and flexible approach that does not require serialization and de-serialization steps.

Forked from the official TypeID-JS package, this version is tailored for TypeScript projects that prefer a string-based representation.

Installation

Using npm:

Installation

Using npm:

npm install typeid-unboxed

Using yarn:

yarn add typeid-unboxed

Using pnpm:

pnpm add typeid-unboxed

``

Usage

To create a random TypeID of a given type, use the typeid() function:

import { typeid } from "typeid-unboxed";
const tid = typeid("prefix");

The prefix is optional, so if you need to create an id without a type prefix, you can do that too:

import { typeid } from "typeid-unboxed";
const tid = typeid();

The return type of typeid("prefix") is TypeID<"prefix">, which lets you use TypeScript's type checking to ensure you are passing the correct type prefix to functions that expect it.

For example, you can create a function that only accepts TypeIDs of type user:

import { typeid, TypeID } from "typeid-unboxed";

function doSomethingWithUserID(id: TypeID<"user">) {
  // ...
}

In addition to the typeid() function, the TypeID class has additional methods to encode/decode from other formats.

For example, to parse an existing typeid from a string:

import { fromString } from "typeid-unboxed";

// The second argument is optional, but it converts to type TypeID<"prefix"> instead
// of TypeID<string>
const tid = fromString("prefix_00041061050r3gg28a1c60t3gf", "prefix");

To encode an existing UUID as a TypeID:

import { fromUUID } from "typeid-unboxed";

// In this case TypeID<"prefix"> is inferred from the second argument
const tid = fromUUID("00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000", "prefix");

The full list of exported functions includes:

• typeid(prefix?, suffix?): Creates a TypeID with an optional prefix and suffix.
• fromString(typeId, prefix?): Parses a TypeID from a string, optionally validating against a provided prefix.
• parseTypeID(typeId): Parses a TypeID string into its prefix and suffix components.
• getType(typeId): Retrieves the prefix from a TypeID.
• getSuffix(typeId): Retrieves the suffix from a TypeID.
• isTypeID(value): Checks if a given string is a valid TypeID format.
• toUUID(typeId): Decodes the TypeID into a UUID string in hex format. The type prefix is ignored.
• toUUIDBytes(typeId): Decodes the TypeID into a UUID byte array. The type prefix is ignored.
• fromUUID(uuid, prefix?): Creates a TypeID from a UUID in hex format, with an optional prefix.
• fromUUIDBytes(prefix, bytes): Creates a TypeID from a prefix and a UUID in byte array format.