Underscore.js and guid function

Underscore library comes with the uniqueId() function that generates globally unique IDs to use in code. But it was not enough for my Backbone models as I needed the IDs to be unique across  invocations and users, i.e. something like UUID.

I have been using this code snippet to generate pseudo unique IDs for some time. Since it’s a utility function and it made lots of sense to move it to Underscore itself. Here’s how I did it.

_.mixin({
    guid : function(){
      return 'xxxxxxxx-xxxx-4xxx-yxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx'.replace(/[xy]/g, function(c) {
        var r = Math.random()*16|0, v = c == 'x' ? r : (r&0x3|0x8);
        return v.toString(16);
      });
    }
  });

Once the above code is in place, then creating a unique ID is as simple as calling _.guid().