django-shortuuid

A drop-in Django model field for generating short, URL-safe, and unique IDs using shortuuid.
Customizable, migration-friendly, with optional collision detection and Django admin integration.

Features

• Short, URL-safe unique IDs for Django models (default 22 characters, configurable)
• Customizable alphabet, prefix, and length
• Optional database collision detection and retry logic
• Django admin: field is read-only but visible
• Compatible with Django migrations
• Python type hints

Installation

pip install django-shortuuid

Usage

from django.db import models
from django_shortuuid.fields import ShortUUIDField

class MyModel(models.Model):
    id = ShortUUIDField(primary_key=True, prefix="id-")
    # ... other fields ...

By default, auto=True generates a unique short UUID when each instance is saved, and makes the field read-only in forms/admin.

Example

See django_example/ for a full Django setup and admin usage.

Configuration

• auto: Generate and set value automatically (True by default)
• length: Length of the generated unique string (default 22)
• prefix: Optional string prefix for the field value
• alphabet: Custom alphabet for uuid generation (default: shortuuid’s default)
• collision_check: Enables collision checking in the database (True by default)
• max_retries: Max attempts to generate unique value before error (10 by default)

License

MIT Copyright (c) stabldev

Credits

This project was inspired by benrobster/django-shortuuidfield
and builds on ideas from the original implementation.

Special thanks to shortuuid for the short, URL-safe UUID generation.