Is there any way to create mongodb like _id strings without mongodb?

Question

I really like the format of the _ids generated by mongodb. Mostly because I can pull data like the date out of them client side. I'm planning to use another database but still want that type of _id for my document. How can I create these ids without using mongodb?

Thanks!

Answer 1

A very easy pseudo ObjectId generator in javascript:

const ObjectId = (m = Math, d = Date, h = 16, s = s => m.floor(s).toString(h)) =>     s(d.now() / 1000) + ' '.repeat(h).replace(/./g, () => s(m.random() * h)) 

Answer 2

I have a browser client that generates ObjectIds. I wanted to make sure that I employ the same ObjectId algorithm in the client as the one used in the server. MongoDB has js-bson which can be used to accomplish that.

If you are using javascript with node.

npm install --save bson

Using require statement

var ObjectID = require('bson').ObjectID;  var id  = new ObjectID(); console.log(id.toString()); 

Using ES6 import statement

import { ObjectID } from 'bson';  const id  = new ObjectID(); console.log(id.toString()); 

The library also lets you import using good old script tags but I have not tried this.