NAME

Data::UUID - Perl extension for generating Globally/Universally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs/UUIDs).

SYNOPSIS

  use Data::UUID;
  
  $ug    = new Data::UUID;
  $uuid1 = $ug->create();
  $uuid2 = $ug->create_from_name(<namespace>, <name>);

  $res   = $ug->compare($uuid1, $uuid2);

  $str   = $ug->to_string( $uuid );
  $uuid  = $ug->from_string( $str );

DESCRIPTION

   This module provides a framework for generating UUIDs (Universally Unique
   Identifiers, also known as GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers). A UUID is
   128 bits long, and is guaranteed to be different from all other UUIDs/GUIDs
   generated until 3400 A.D. UUIDs were originally used in the Network Computing 
   System (NCS) and later in the Open Software Foundation's (OSF) Distributed 
   Computing Environment. Currently many different technologies rely on UUIDs to
   provide unique identity for various software components, Microsoft COM/DCOM
   for instance, uses GUIDs very extensively to uniquely identify classes, 
   applications and components across network-connected systems.
   The algorithm for UUID generation, used by this extension, is described in the
   Internet Draft "UUIDs and GUIDs" by Paul J. Leach and Rich Salz. It provides
   reasonably efficient and reliable framework for generating UUIDs and supports
   fairly high allocation rates - 10 million per second per machine, and therefore,
   is suitable for identifying both - extremely short-lived and very persistent 
   objects on a given system as well as across the network.
   This modules provides several methods to create a UUID:

   # creates binary (16 byte long binary value) UUID.
   $ug->create();
   $ug->create_bin();

   # creates binary (16-byte long binary value) UUID based on particular
   # namespace and name string.
   $ug->create_from_name(<namespace>, <name>);
   $ug->create_from_name_bin(<namespace>, <name>); 

   # creates UUID string, using conventional UUID string format,
   # such as: 4162F712-1DD2-11B2-B17E-C09EFE1DC403 
   $ug->create_str();
   $ug->create_from_name_str(<namespace>, <name>);

   # creates UUID string as a hex string,
   # such as: 0x4162F7121DD211B2B17EC09EFE1DC403 
   $ug->create_hex();
   $ug->create_from_name_hex(<namespace>, <name>);

   # creates UUID string as a Base64-encoded string
   $ug->create_b64();
   $ug->create_from_name_b64(<namespace>, <name>);   

   Binary UUIDs can be converted to printable strings using following methods:

   # convert to conventional string representation
   $ug->to_string(<uuid>);

   # convert to hex string
   $ug->to_hexstring(<uuid>);

   # convert to Base64-encoded string
   $ug->to_b64string(<uuid>);

   Conversly, string UUIDs can be converted back to binary form:

   # recreate binary UUID from string
   $ug->from_string(<uuid>);
   $ug->from_hexstring(<uuid>); 

   # recreate binary UUID from Base64-encoded string
   $ug->from_b64string(<uuid>);

   Finally, two binary UUIDs can be compared using the following method:

   # returns -1, 0 or 1 depending on whether uuid1 less
   # than, equals to, or greater than uuid2
   $ug->compare(<uuid1>, <uuid2>);

   Examples:

   use Data::UUID qw(:all);

   # this creates a new UUID in string form, based on the standard namespace
   # UUID NameSpace_URL and name "www.mycompany.com"

   $ug = new Data::UUID;
   print $ug->create_from_name_str(NameSpace_URL, "www.mycompany.com");

EXPORT

   The module allows exporting of several standard namespace UUIDs:
      NameSpace_DNS
      NameSpace_URL
      NameSpace_OID
      NameSpace_X500

AUTHOR

Alexander Golomshtok<lt>golomshtok_alexander@jpmorgan.com<gt>

SEE ALSO

perl.