feat(string): adds support for generating ULID #2524

brunocleite · 2023-11-03T17:26:58Z

There is another type of unique identifier other than UUID that is called ULID Universally Unique Lexicographically Sortable Identifier.
This type of identifier has the benefit of maintaining a sortable order and is useful as primary keys on databases (mainly NoSQL) to get free date-time sorting out of the box. More information here

ULID is a 26 characters string which the first 10 characters are the timestamp as millis from the epoch and the other 16 are the randomness.
The allowed characters are from Crockford's Base32 which excludes letters I, L, and O to avoid confusion with digits.

ulid(): string {
    return (
      this.fromCharacters('012', 1) +
      this.fromCharacters('0123456789ABCDEFGHJKMNPQRSTVWXYZ', 25)
    );
  }

On the code excerpt above it is using the first character as [012] because that would already generate dates up to year 5314 which is more than enough. To confirm this behavior you can go here and try using 2ZZZZZZZZZWZYF0EJ600G2SZHA as an ULID.

brunocleite · 2023-11-03T21:58:44Z

Update: improved the description

xDivisionByZerox · 2023-11-03T22:21:55Z

Thank you for your contribution. Since this PR doesn't have a relatet issue, please understand that we might need some time to decide on the usability of this feature. Thank you for your patience.

codecov · 2023-11-03T23:33:52Z

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Project coverage is 99.94%. Comparing base (a27aafe) to head (f41fd27).

❗ Current head f41fd27 differs from pull request most recent head 6fcba2c. Consider uploading reports for the commit 6fcba2c to get more accurate results

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             next    #2524      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   99.94%   99.94%   -0.01%     
==========================================
  Files        2958     2958              
  Lines      213715   213730      +15     
  Branches      603      952     +349     
==========================================
+ Hits       213595   213602       +7     
- Misses        120      124       +4     
- Partials        0        4       +4

Files	Coverage Δ
src/modules/string/index.ts	`100.00% <100.00%> (ø)`

... and 5 files with indirect coverage changes

ST-DDT · 2023-11-07T16:17:36Z

Team Decision

We checked the project activity and downloads and while it has some, we are waiting for more interest from the community before adding it to our official API.

The PR description contains a script that can be used as a workaround.

matthewmayer · 2023-11-07T16:38:11Z

Can we add a matching issue so it can collect upvotes?

ant1m4tt3r · 2024-02-07T12:56:22Z

didn't find any issues related to this, but I would like to state my support for this feature!

Shinigami92 · 2024-02-07T16:26:33Z

On the code excerpt above it is using the first character as [012] because that would already generate dates up to year 5314 which is more than enough.

While that might be true, I would be in favor to build it differently and make use of refDate like we do in other functions 🤔

matthewmayer · 2024-02-08T00:25:44Z

Added #2648 to allow for collecting upvotes (we normally try to get 10 upvotes to indicate sufficient interest) and further promote discussion

# Conflicts: # test/modules/__snapshots__/string.spec.ts.snap

ST-DDT · 2024-03-15T12:49:49Z

@brunocleite Please fix the failing tests. Probably using pnpm run preflight.

…ation' into feat/adds-support-for-ulid-generation

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matthewmayer · 2024-03-19T01:50:08Z

src/modules/string/index.ts

+   */
+  ulid(): string {
+    return (
+      this.fromCharacters('012', 1) +


perhaps add a comment here that ULIDs starting with 0, 1 or 2 cover the years 1970-5314

I've updated the PR with a new solution proposal addressing the suggestions by @Shinigami92.
It should now generate the timestamp part of the ULID from refDate.

…ation' into feat/adds-support-for-ulid-generation

brunocleite · 2024-03-19T23:12:28Z

On the code excerpt above it is using the first character as [012] because that would already generate dates up to year 5314 which is more than enough.

While that might be true, I would be in favor to build it differently and make use of refDate like we do in other functions 🤔

Thanks. I'm looking at the examples on faker.date.anytime() and makes sense to use refDate.
ULIDs objective is to generate IDs that contains current timestamp and are sortable, so I'm seeing your point, as the way it was implemented before would generate ULIDs with extreme dates like year 3000 or 4000. Or even 1970 when ULIDs didn't even exist. So using refDate as an optional argument, falling back to defaultRefDate seems like a good choice.

I've done a proposal implementation and updated this PR to achieve this, though, I have a couple questions:

I needed similar functionality to toDate function , which lives on date/index.ts and it is not exported. Likewise, I've copied the code over to ULID implementation, but just asking if there could be a better way to avoid repetition.
We will need a function encodeTime (see here) to convert a Date to a 10 character string. This 10 character string is the encoded date, which is the beginning of the ULID string. I've stored this function along with ULID implementation.

matthewmayer · 2024-03-20T00:07:29Z

toDate is currently being rewritten as part of #2757 so probably makes sense to wait for that to be merged first.

test/modules/string.spec.ts

outdated

ST-DDT

Please note that this is still waiting for community interest.

ST-DDT · 2024-03-20T13:15:21Z

src/modules/string/index.ts

+    const { refDate } = options;
+    let date = refDate;
+
+    if (date == null) {


I think the comment was more about adding a comment to explain the magic numbers than to add an refDate parameter.
Nevertheless instead of copying the implementation, we should export the toDate function as internal helper and reuse it here.

feat(string): adds support for generating ULID

4bb549a

brunocleite requested a review from a team as a code owner November 3, 2023 17:26

xDivisionByZerox added c: feature Request for new feature p: 1-normal Nothing urgent s: awaiting more info Additional information are requested s: needs decision Needs team/maintainer decision m: string Something is referring to the string module labels Nov 3, 2023

ST-DDT added this to the vFuture milestone Nov 7, 2023

ST-DDT added s: waiting for user interest Waiting for more users interested in this feature and removed s: awaiting more info Additional information are requested s: needs decision Needs team/maintainer decision labels Nov 7, 2023

ST-DDT added the has workaround Workaround provided or linked label Nov 7, 2023

ST-DDT assigned brunocleite Nov 7, 2023

Merge branch 'next' into feat/adds-support-for-ulid-generation

493c3e0

matthewmayer mentioned this pull request Feb 8, 2024

Add support for generating ULID #2648

Open

matthewmayer linked an issue Feb 8, 2024 that may be closed by this pull request

Add support for generating ULID #2648

Open

brunocleite and others added 2 commits March 14, 2024 20:07

Merge branch 'next' into feat/adds-support-for-ulid-generation

b6dc97b

# Conflicts: # test/modules/__snapshots__/string.spec.ts.snap

Merge branch 'next' into feat/adds-support-for-ulid-generation

b63d07b

brunocleite added 2 commits March 18, 2024 20:24

fix(string): update ulid values (faker-js#2648)

9ba1bbe

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/feat/adds-support-for-ulid-gener…

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…ation' into feat/adds-support-for-ulid-generation

Merge branch 'next' into feat/adds-support-for-ulid-generation

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brunocleite added 2 commits March 19, 2024 20:12

feat(string): updates ulid implementation using refDate

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Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/feat/adds-support-for-ulid-gener…

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…ation' into feat/adds-support-for-ulid-generation

feat(string): updates ulid refDate documentation

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matthewmayer reviewed Mar 20, 2024

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test/modules/string.spec.ts Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

ST-DDT reviewed Mar 20, 2024

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fix(string): updates ulid regex to match all possible ULID values

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feat(string): adds support for generating ULID #2524

feat(string): adds support for generating ULID #2524

brunocleite commented Nov 3, 2023 •

edited

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xDivisionByZerox commented Nov 3, 2023

codecov bot commented Nov 3, 2023 •

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feat(string): adds support for generating ULID #2524

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feat(string): adds support for generating ULID #2524

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