9.14. UUID Functions #

   Table 9.45 shows the PostgreSQL functions that can be used to generate
   UUIDs.

   Table 9.45. UUID Generation Functions

   Function

   Description

   Example(s)

   gen_random_uuid → uuid

   uuidv4 → uuid

   Generate a version 4 (random) UUID.

   gen_random_uuid() → 5b30857f-0bfa-48b5-ac0b-5c64e28078d1

   uuidv4() → b42410ee-132f-42ee-9e4f-09a6485c95b8

   uuidv7 ( [ shift interval ] ) → uuid

   Generate a version 7 (time-ordered) UUID. The timestamp is computed
   using UNIX timestamp with millisecond precision + sub-millisecond
   timestamp + random. The optional parameter shift will shift the
   computed timestamp by the given interval.

   uuidv7() → 019535d9-3df7-79fb-b466-fa907fa17f9e

Note

   The uuid-ossp module provides additional functions that implement other
   standard algorithms for generating UUIDs.

   Table 9.46 shows the PostgreSQL functions that can be used to extract
   information from UUIDs.

   Table 9.46. UUID Extraction Functions

   Function

   Description

   Example(s)

   uuid_extract_timestamp ( uuid ) → timestamp with time zone

   Extracts a timestamp with time zone from UUID version 1 and 7. For
   other versions, this function returns null. Note that the extracted
   timestamp is not necessarily exactly equal to the time the UUID was
   generated; this depends on the implementation that generated the UUID.

   uuid_extract_timestamp('019535d9-3df7-79fb-b466-​fa907fa17f9e'::uuid) →
   2025-02-23 21:46:24.503-05

   uuid_extract_version ( uuid ) → smallint

   Extracts the version from a UUID of the variant described by RFC 9562.
   For other variants, this function returns null. For example, for a UUID
   generated by gen_random_uuid, this function will return 4.

   uuid_extract_version('41db1265-8bc1-4ab3-992f-​885799a4af1d'::uuid) → 4

   uuid_extract_version('019535d9-3df7-79fb-b466-​fa907fa17f9e'::uuid) → 7

   PostgreSQL also provides the usual comparison operators shown in
   Table 9.1 for UUIDs.

   See Section 8.12 for details on the data type uuid in PostgreSQL.