UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) is a 128-bit value used to uniquely identify information across systems. In Advanced Java, UUIDs are commonly used for database primary keys, distributed systems, session identifiers, and API tokens.
java.util.UUIDA UUID is represented as a 36-character string (32 hex digits + 4 hyphens). Java provides built-in methods to generate and parse UUID values.
// Generating a random UUID using Java
import java.util.UUID;
public class UUIDExample {
public static void main(String[] args) {
UUID uuid = UUID.randomUUID();
System.out.println(uuid);
}
}
// Converting UUID to String and back to UUID
import java.util.UUID;
public class UUIDConversion {
public static void main(String[] args) {
UUID original = UUID.randomUUID();
String uuidStr = original.toString();
UUID parsed = UUID.fromString(uuidStr);
System.out.println(parsed);
}
}
Click below to simulate Java's UUID.randomUUID() behavior right now!
Each execution prints a different value like:
f47ac10b-58cc-4372-a567-0e02b2c3d479
This proves that UUIDs are randomly generated and extremely unlikely to collide.
CHAR(36) or BINARY(16) in databases