How To Use UUID instead auto-increment Id Laravel 8

Table of contents

1. What are UUID
2. Create new Laravel project
3. Configure Database Credentials
4. Uuid Trait
5. Preparing User Model and Migration
6. Install Laravel Breeze
7. Testing our Trait
8. GitHub Repo

1. What are UUID.

UUID stands for Universally Unique IDentifier. It's a 128-bit value used for a unique identification in software development.

If you want to learn more about UUID you can check this article What are UUIDs, and should you use them?

2. Create new Laravel Project

In your terminal execute

composer create-project laravel/laravel uuid-project

Note: Since, Laravel 5.6, ramsey/uuid library is part of Laravel, so you don't have to install it by yourself to generate the UUID.

3. Configure Database Credentials

Open your .env, put your credentials

4. Uuid Trait

In this case, I'm going to create a trait because it's more flexible and we can use it in every model we want.

Let's create a new folder inside app called Trait and file UuidTrait.php like this

Open the new file and use the following code

<?php

namespace App\Traits;

use Illuminate\Support\Str;

trait UuidTrait
{
    /**
     * Boot function from Laravel.
     */
    protected static function boot()
    {
        parent::boot();
        static::creating(function ($model) {
            if (empty($model->{$model->getKeyName()})) {
                $model->{$model->getKeyName()} = Str::uuid()->toString();
            }
        });
    }

    /**
     * Get the value indicating whether the IDs are incrementing.
     *
     * @return bool
     */
    public function getIncrementing()
    {
        return false;
    }

    /**
     * Get the auto-incrementing key type.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function getKeyType()
    {
        return 'string';
    }
}

• In this case, we need to specify that the primary key is string using getKeyType

• We need to disable auto-incrementing id using getIncrementing() returning false

• The boot method will generate the UUID.

• Don't forget to import Illuminate\Support\Str;

5. Preparing User Model and Migration

Let's go to database/migrations search for users migration file, change the default id:

   public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->uuid('id')->primary();
            $table->string('name');
            $table->string('email')->unique();
            $table->timestamp('email_verified_at')->nullable();
            $table->string('password');
            $table->rememberToken();
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

You can see we change $table->id() for $table->uuid('id')->primary() our migration file is ready, now we can go to app/Models/User.php, add the trait

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use App\Traits\UuidTrait;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\MustVerifyEmail;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
use Laravel\Sanctum\HasApiTokens;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasApiTokens, HasFactory, Notifiable, UuidTrait;

    /**
     * The attributes that are mass assignable.
     *
     * @var string[]
     */
    protected $fillable = [
        'name',
        'email',
        'password',
    ];

}

After Notifiable Trait we need to add UuidTrait, our model is ready!!!

Execute in your terminal

php artisan migrate

Let's test if this works by making an authentication system with Laravel Breeze.

6. Install Laravel Breeze

To install Laravel Breeze execute this command in your terminal

composer require laravel/breeze

After installing the package, run this command

php artisan breeze:install

To finish this part you need to run

npm install && npm run dev

Note: You need to have installed node.js to execute npm install && npm run dev

7. Testing our Trait

Let's register a new user

This is the moment we are waiting, we need to verify in our database if we store and UUID instead of a regular ID.

This works. How cool is that!!!

8. GitHub Repo

If you have any doubt you can check the repo Laravel-UUID or leave a comment down below.

Happy coding ☕. Thanks for reading 🙏.