Guid

Introduction#

GUID (or UUID) is an acronym for ‘Globally Unique Identifier’ (or ‘Universally Unique Identifier’). It is a 128-bit integer number used to identify resources.

Remarks#

Guids are Globally Unique Identifiers, also known as UUID’s, Universally Unique Identifiers.

They are 128-bit pseudorandom values. There are so many valid Guids (about 10^18 Guids for each cell of every people on Earth) that if they are generated by a good pseudorandom algorithm, they can be considered unique in the whole universe by all practical means.

Guids are most often used as primary keys in databases. Their advantage is that you don’t have to call the database to get a new ID that is (almost) guaranteed to be unique.

Getting the string representation of a Guid

A string representation of a Guid can be obtained by using the built in ToString method

string myGuidString = myGuid.ToString();

Depending on your needs you can also format the Guid, by adding a format type argument to the ToString call.

var guid = new Guid("7febf16f-651b-43b0-a5e3-0da8da49e90d");

// None          "7febf16f651b43b0a5e30da8da49e90d"
Console.WriteLine(guid.ToString("N"));

// Hyphens       "7febf16f-651b-43b0-a5e3-0da8da49e90d"
Console.WriteLine(guid.ToString("D"));

// Braces        "{7febf16f-651b-43b0-a5e3-0da8da49e90d}"
Console.WriteLine(guid.ToString("B"));

// Parentheses   "(7febf16f-651b-43b0-a5e3-0da8da49e90d)"
Console.WriteLine(guid.ToString("P"));

// Hex           "{0x7febf16f,0x651b,0x43b0{0xa5,0xe3,0x0d,0xa8,0xda,0x49,0xe9,0x0d}}"
Console.WriteLine(guid.ToString("X"));

Creating a Guid

These are the most common ways to create an instance of Guid:

• Creating an empty guid (00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000):

  Guid g = Guid.Empty; Guid g2 = new Guid();

• Creating a new (pseudorandom) Guid:

  Guid g = Guid.NewGuid();

• Creating Guids with a specific value:

  Guid g = new Guid(“0b214de7-8958-4956-8eed-28f9ba2c47c6”); Guid g2 = new Guid(“0b214de7895849568eed28f9ba2c47c6”); Guid g3 = Guid.Parse(“0b214de7-8958-4956-8eed-28f9ba2c47c6”);

Declaring a nullable GUID

Like other value types, GUID also has a nullable type which can take null value.

Declaration :

Guid? myGuidVar = null;

This is particularly useful when retrieving data from the data base when there is a possibility that value from a table is NULL.