idgen

[alexluong]

Overview

Outpost should allow users to configure ID generation logic (UUID v4, UUID v7, NanoID) with optional prefixes per entity type.

Implementation

Both approaches use an idgen package with a singleton pattern - configure once at app startup via idgen.Configure(), then use idgen.Event() throughout the codebase.

Configuration: Two Approaches

Option 1: Config-Based (Recommended)

#530

id_gen:
  type: "nanoid"           # Global type for all entities
  event_prefix: "evt"      # Per-entity prefixes

Pros:

• ✅ Faster - strategy selected once at startup (no template parsing/execution)
• ✅ Simpler - easy to configure

Cons:

• ❌ Less flexible - can only do what we explicitly support

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Option 2: Template-Based

#531

id_template:
  event: "evt_{{uuidv4}}"

Pros:

• ✅ More flexible - custom prefix, suffix, and separator: "evt-{{uuidv7}}-prod", "{{nanoid}}.suffix"

Cons:

• ❌ Performance: ~2.7x slower (590ns overhead per ID) - negligible but measurable at scale
• ❌ User Experience: Less intuitive - requires learning template syntax, typos fail at runtime instead of config validation

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Recommendation

Go with config-based unless we have a strong use case for template flexibility. It's simpler, faster, and easier to maintain. We can always add template support later if needed.

[alexbouchardd]

I tend to agree with config base as we might need to add more intricate config like id length, alphabet etc.