Use a random string as id in Ruby on Rails?

Question

I want to create a web app similar to http://www.pastebin.com/ in Ruby on Rails. pastebin.com uses a random string to identify an item. Ruby on Rails uses an auto-incrementing n

Answer 1

For vanilla ruby

require 'securerandom'
require 'base64'

slug = Base64.encode64(SecureRandom.uuid)[0..10]
=> "YWVkNzZmYjI" 
=> "MzQxMDkxY2U"