Random number formatter.

Formats generated random numbers in many manners. When 'random/formatter' is required, several methods are added to empty core module Random::Formatter, making them available as Random’s instance and module methods.

Standard library SecureRandom is also extended with the module, and the methods described below are available as a module methods in it.

Examples

Generate random hexadecimal strings:

require 'random/formatter'

prng = Random.new
prng.hex(10) #=> "52750b30ffbc7de3b362"
prng.hex(10) #=> "92b15d6c8dc4beb5f559"
prng.hex(13) #=> "39b290146bea6ce975c37cfc23"
# or just
Random.hex #=> "1aed0c631e41be7f77365415541052ee"

Generate random base64 strings:

prng.base64(10) #=> "EcmTPZwWRAozdA=="
prng.base64(10) #=> "KO1nIU+p9DKxGg=="
prng.base64(12) #=> "7kJSM/MzBJI+75j8"
Random.base64(4) #=> "bsQ3fQ=="

Generate random binary strings:

prng.random_bytes(10) #=> "\016\t{\370g\310pbr\301"
prng.random_bytes(10) #=> "\323U\030TO\234\357\020\a\337"
Random.random_bytes(6) #=> "\xA1\xE6Lr\xC43"

Generate alphanumeric strings:

prng.alphanumeric(10) #=> "S8baxMJnPl"
prng.alphanumeric(10) #=> "aOxAg8BAJe"
Random.alphanumeric #=> "TmP9OsJHJLtaZYhP"

Generate UUIDs:

prng.uuid #=> "2d931510-d99f-494a-8c67-87feb05e1594"
prng.uuid #=> "bad85eb9-0713-4da7-8d36-07a8e4b00eab"
Random.uuid #=> "f14e0271-de96-45cc-8911-8910292a42cd"

All methods are available in the standard library SecureRandom, too:

SecureRandom.hex #=> "05b45376a30c67238eb93b16499e50cf"

Generate a random number in the given range as Random does

prng.random_number       #=> 0.5816771641321361
prng.random_number(1000) #=> 485
prng.random_number(1..6) #=> 3
prng.rand                #=> 0.5816771641321361
prng.rand(1000)          #=> 485
prng.rand(1..6)          #=> 3
Constants

The default character list for alphanumeric.

Instance Methods

Generate a random alphanumeric string.

The argument n specifies the length, in characters, of the alphanumeric string to be generated. The argument chars specifies the character list which the result is consist of.

If n is not specified or is nil, 16 is assumed. It may be larger in the future.

The result may contain A-Z, a-z and 0-9, unless chars is specified.

require 'random/formatter'

Random.alphanumeric     #=> "2BuBuLf3WfSKyQbR"
# or
prng = Random.new
prng.alphanumeric(10) #=> "i6K93NdqiH"

Random.alphanumeric(4, chars: [*"0".."9"]) #=> "2952"
# or
prng = Random.new
prng.alphanumeric(10, chars: [*"!".."/"]) #=> ",.,++%/''."

Generate a random base64 string.

The argument n specifies the length, in bytes, of the random number to be generated. The length of the result string is about 4/3 of n.

If n is not specified or is nil, 16 is assumed. It may be larger in the future.

The result may contain A-Z, a-z, 0-9, “+”, “/” and “=”.

require 'random/formatter'

Random.base64 #=> "/2BuBuLf3+WfSKyQbRcc/A=="
# or
prng = Random.new
prng.base64 #=> "6BbW0pxO0YENxn38HMUbcQ=="

See RFC 3548 for the definition of base64.

Generate a string that randomly draws from a source array of characters.

The argument source specifies the array of characters from which to generate the string. The argument n specifies the length, in characters, of the string to be generated.

The result may contain whatever characters are in the source array.

require 'random/formatter'

prng.choose([*'l'..'r'], 16) #=> "lmrqpoonmmlqlron"
prng.choose([*'0'..'9'], 5)  #=> "27309"

Internal interface to Random; Generate random data n bytes.

Generate a random hexadecimal string.

The argument n specifies the length, in bytes, of the random number to be generated. The length of the resulting hexadecimal string is twice of n.

If n is not specified or is nil, 16 is assumed. It may be larger in the future.

The result may contain 0-9 and a-f.

require 'random/formatter'

Random.hex #=> "eb693ec8252cd630102fd0d0fb7c3485"
# or
prng = Random.new
prng.hex #=> "91dc3bfb4de5b11d029d376634589b61"

Generate a random binary string.

The argument n specifies the length of the result string.

If n is not specified or is nil, 16 is assumed. It may be larger in future.

The result may contain any byte: “x00” - “xff”.

require 'random/formatter'

Random.random_bytes #=> "\xD8\\\xE0\xF4\r\xB2\xFC*WM\xFF\x83\x18\xF45\xB6"
# or
prng = Random.new
prng.random_bytes #=> "m\xDC\xFC/\a\x00Uf\xB2\xB2P\xBD\xFF6S\x97"

Generates formatted random number from raw random bytes. See Random#rand.

Generate a random URL-safe base64 string.

The argument n specifies the length, in bytes, of the random number to be generated. The length of the result string is about 4/3 of n.

If n is not specified or is nil, 16 is assumed. It may be larger in the future.

The boolean argument padding specifies the padding. If it is false or nil, padding is not generated. Otherwise padding is generated. By default, padding is not generated because “=” may be used as a URL delimiter.

The result may contain A-Z, a-z, 0-9, “-” and “_”. “=” is also used if padding is true.

require 'random/formatter'

Random.urlsafe_base64 #=> "b4GOKm4pOYU_-BOXcrUGDg"
# or
prng = Random.new
prng.urlsafe_base64 #=> "UZLdOkzop70Ddx-IJR0ABg"

prng.urlsafe_base64(nil, true) #=> "i0XQ-7gglIsHGV2_BNPrdQ=="
prng.urlsafe_base64(nil, true) #=> "-M8rLhr7JEpJlqFGUMmOxg=="

See RFC 3548 for the definition of URL-safe base64.

Generate a random v4 UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier).

require 'random/formatter'

Random.uuid #=> "2d931510-d99f-494a-8c67-87feb05e1594"
Random.uuid #=> "bad85eb9-0713-4da7-8d36-07a8e4b00eab"
# or
prng = Random.new
prng.uuid #=> "62936e70-1815-439b-bf89-8492855a7e6b"

The version 4 UUID is purely random (except the version). It doesn’t contain meaningful information such as MAC addresses, timestamps, etc.

The result contains 122 random bits (15.25 random bytes).

See RFC4122 for details of UUID.

An alias for uuid

Generate a random v7 UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier).

require 'random/formatter'

Random.uuid_v7 # => "0188d4c3-1311-7f96-85c7-242a7aa58f1e"
Random.uuid_v7 # => "0188d4c3-16fe-744f-86af-38fa04c62bb5"
Random.uuid_v7 # => "0188d4c3-1af8-764f-b049-c204ce0afa23"
Random.uuid_v7 # => "0188d4c3-1e74-7085-b14f-ef6415dc6f31"
#                    |<--sorted-->| |<----- random ---->|

# or
prng = Random.new
prng.uuid_v7 # => "0188ca51-5e72-7950-a11d-def7ff977c98"

The version 7 UUID starts with the least significant 48 bits of a 64 bit Unix timestamp (milliseconds since the epoch) and fills the remaining bits with random data, excluding the version and variant bits.

This allows version 7 UUIDs to be sorted by creation time. Time ordered UUIDs can be used for better database index locality of newly inserted records, which may have a significant performance benefit compared to random data inserts.

The result contains 74 random bits (9.25 random bytes).

Note that this method cannot be made reproducable because its output includes not only random bits but also timestamp.

See draft-ietf-uuidrev-rfc4122bis for details of UUIDv7.

Monotonicity

UUIDv7 has millisecond precision by default, so multiple UUIDs created within the same millisecond are not issued in monotonically increasing order. To create UUIDs that are time-ordered with sub-millisecond precision, up to 12 bits of additional timestamp may added with extra_timestamp_bits. The extra timestamp precision comes at the expense of random bits. Setting extra_timestamp_bits: 12 provides ~244ns of precision, but only 62 random bits (7.75 random bytes).

prng = Random.new
Array.new(4) { prng.uuid_v7(extra_timestamp_bits: 12) }
# =>
["0188d4c7-13da-74f9-8b53-22a786ffdd5a",
 "0188d4c7-13da-753b-83a5-7fb9b2afaeea",
 "0188d4c7-13da-754a-88ea-ac0baeedd8db",
 "0188d4c7-13da-7557-83e1-7cad9cda0d8d"]
# |<--- sorted --->| |<-- random --->|

Array.new(4) { prng.uuid_v7(extra_timestamp_bits: 8) }
# =>
["0188d4c7-3333-7a95-850a-de6edb858f7e",
 "0188d4c7-3333-7ae8-842e-bc3a8b7d0cf9",  # <- out of order
 "0188d4c7-3333-7ae2-995a-9f135dc44ead",  # <- out of order
 "0188d4c7-3333-7af9-87c3-8f612edac82e"]
# |<--- sorted -->||<---- random --->|

Any rollbacks of the system clock will break monotonicity. UUIDv7 is based on UTC, which excludes leap seconds and can rollback the clock. To avoid this, the system clock can synchronize with an NTP server configured to use a “leap smear” approach. NTP or PTP will also be needed to synchronize across distributed nodes.

Counters and other mechanisms for stronger guarantees of monotonicity are not implemented. Applications with stricter requirements should follow Section 6.2 of the specification.