How to Generate Unique Number of 8 digits?

Question

I am using this code to generate a 8 digit unique number.

byte[] buffer = Guid.NewGuid().ToByteArray();
return BitConverter.ToUInt32(buffer, 8).ToString();
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Answer 1

If you want a unique number between 10000000 and 99999999, start an integer from 10000000 and just start incrementing it. Generating sequentially ordered numbers is no less random than any other generated sequence, and a whole lot easier to generate.

Answer 2

If you express the no as a combination of day( 2digit), hour(2digit), minute(2digit), second(2digit) and year ( 4 digit) , then it will be 12 digit but always unique no.

 DateTime _now = DateTime.Now;
 string _dd = _now.ToString("dd"); //
 string _mm = _now.ToString("MM");
 string _yy = _now.ToString("yyyy");
 string _hh = _now.Hour.ToString();
 string _min = _now.Minute.ToString();
 string _ss = _now.Second.ToString();

 string _uniqueId= _dd+ _hh+ _mm+_min+_ss + _yy;

Answer 3

The range of values is too small. An incrementing counter is the best solution, like in an ERP system - you set the first customer number to 1000 and the next one is 1001, 1002,...,99999999. Otherwise, if you get a random number (or part of GUID) from these, you'll hit the same number again. Depending on your app, sooner or later but it's guaranteed to happen sooner than just iterating over them.

Answer 4

A GUID is not just a random number; it's composed of segments. Some of the segments will not change at all if the guid is generated on the same computer. By using only 64-bits of the original 128-bits you are breaking the structure of the guid and most likely breaking the uniqueness of the generated number.

This question has more info on uniqueness of guids, check this link as well for more info on why it's bad to use only part of a guid if you need a unique number.

If you need to limit duplication to an absolute minimum, an incremental counter will give you what you need. If your application is using multiple threads or processes, a counter may be hard (or even impossible) to implement correctly.

This is the realm that guids were designed for, to be unique across multiple machines. So if uniqueness across machines is a requirement you should use guids. The whole guid.

Answer 5

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1);
long code = (long)DateTime.UtcNow.Subtract(new DateTime(2018, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Utc)).TotalMilliseconds;

OR

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
long code = (long)DateTime.UtcNow.Subtract(new DateTime(2018, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Utc)).TotalSeconds;

Answer 6

Here is another version

public static string GetFormNumber()
    {
        byte[] buffer = Guid.NewGuid().ToByteArray();
        var FormNumber = BitConverter.ToUInt32(buffer, 0) ^ BitConverter.ToUInt32(buffer, 4) ^ BitConverter.ToUInt32(buffer, 8) ^ BitConverter.ToUInt32(buffer, 12);
        return FormNumber.ToString("X");

    }

it assures to be unique!