Examples Overview

This section provides practical examples for common idt use cases.

Quick Examples

Generate and Use

# Generate a UUID and store it
ID=$(idt gen uuidv7 --no-newline)
echo "Created resource with ID: $ID"

# Generate and insert into database
idt gen uuid | xargs -I {} psql -c "INSERT INTO items (id) VALUES ('{}')"

Inspect Unknown IDs

# What type of ID is this?
idt inspect 01ARZ3NDEKTSV4RRFFQ69G5FAV

# When was it created?
idt inspect 019c04e5-6118-7b22-95cb-a10e84dad469 --json | jq '.timestamp_iso'

Batch Operations

# Generate 1000 UUIDs to file
idt gen uuid -n 1000 -o uuids.txt

# Validate all IDs in a file
cat ids.txt | idt validate

# Convert a list of IDs
cat uuids.txt | idt convert -f base64

Example Categories

Generating IDs - ID generation patterns
Inspecting IDs - Analyzing and decoding IDs
Converting Formats - Format transformation
Shell Scripting - Integration with shell scripts
JSON Output - Machine-readable output

Common Patterns

Database Primary Keys

# Generate sortable primary key
idt gen uuidv7

# Generate for existing UUID column
idt gen uuid

API Tokens

# Long, secure token
idt gen nanoid --length 32

# URL-safe token
idt gen nanoid --alphabet "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"

Debugging

# Decode ID from logs
idt inspect "01ARZ3NDEKTSV4RRFFQ69G5FAV"

# Compare two IDs for ordering
idt compare "$OLD_ID" "$NEW_ID"

Data Migration

# Convert UUID format for different system
idt convert "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000" -f base64

# Validate IDs before import
cat export.csv | cut -d, -f1 | idt validate