Sometimes it could be quite useful to have a function that generates unique identifiers. Unfortunately iOS SDK doesn’t have method that simply returns identifier as a string. You should use CFUUIDCreate (returns Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) object) with a couple of other functions to get your string identifier.
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+ (NSString *) generateUUID { CFUUIDRef uuid = CFUUIDCreate(NULL); CFStringRef str = CFUUIDCreateString(NULL, uuid); CFRelease(uuid); NSString *string = (NSString *) str; NSMutableString *result = [NSMutableString stringWithString: string]; [string autorelease]; [result replaceOccurrencesOfString: @"-" withString: @"" options: NSLiteralSearch range: NSMakeRange(0, [result length]) ]; return result; } |
This method uses CFUUIDCreate to create CFUUIDRef instance. Then CFUUIDRef is converted to CFStringRef. We use toll-free bridged cast to get NSString from CFUUIDRef. Finally we remove “-” symbols from the string. Result will look like this “12500-EAD349-4493EB2-408C91ED-9C0BF4″.