UUIDv47: Store UUIDv7 in DB, emit UUIDv4 outside (SipHash-masked timestamp)

5 aabbdev 1 9/17/2025, 2:02:29 PM github.com ↗

Comments (1)

aabbdev · 1h ago
Hi, I’m the author of uuidv47. The idea is simple: keep UUIDv7 internally for database indexing and sortability, but emit UUIDv4-looking façades externally so clients don’t see timing patterns.

How it works: the 48-bit timestamp is XOR-masked with a keyed SipHash-2-4 stream derived from the UUID’s random field. The random bits are preserved, the version flips between 7 (inside) and 4 (outside), and the RFC variant is kept. The mapping is injective: (ts, rand) → (encTS, rand). Decode is just encTS ⊕ mask, so round-trip is exact.

Security: SipHash is a PRF, so observing façades doesn’t leak the key. Wrong key = wrong timestamp. Rotation can be done with a key-ID outside the UUID.

Performance: one SipHash over 10 bytes + a couple of 48-bit loads/stores. Nanosecond overhead, header-only C11, no deps, allocation-free.

Tests: SipHash reference vectors, round-trip encode/decode, and version/variant invariants.

Curious to hear feedback!