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Hamada Habib
Hamada Habib

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🚀 Introducing Laravel ObjectId — The Fastest MongoDB-Style Identifier for Laravel Models

#laravel #php #mysql #mariadb

Works seamlessly with MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL — no MongoDB required.

Every Laravel developer has been there — you start a new project, define your migrations, and by default, your models use auto-incrementing IDs. It works fine... until your app grows, you need distributed systems, API integrations, or microservices. Suddenly, those integer IDs start to look like a limitation.

That’s where Laravel ObjectId comes in — a drop-in, ultra-fast, globally unique identifier system inspired by MongoDB’s ObjectIds, designed for MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL — no MongoDB required.

💡 Why ObjectId?

Unlike UUIDs or ULIDs, ObjectIds are compact 12-byte identifiers that encode timestamp, randomness, and a counter — making them sortable, lightweight, and unique across systems.

In numeric terms, they’re up to 3× faster to generate and smaller in size, which directly improves database performance and indexing.

✅ Works natively with MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL
🚫 No MongoDB driver or extension required

🧬 How ObjectId Works Internally

ObjectIds are 12-byte (96-bit) identifiers consisting of four key parts:

Segment Size Description
Timestamp 4 bytes UNIX epoch seconds — makes IDs sortable by creation time
Machine Identifier 5 bytes Randomly generated, unique per host
Process ID 2 bytes Uniquely identifies the generating process
Counter 3 bytes Incrementing counter initialized randomly per process

➡️ Total = 4 + 5 + 2 + 3 = 12 bytes = 24 hex characters

This design ensures uniqueness without any central generator and preserves chronological order, making it ideal for distributed systems.

For more details, check:

🧩 The Ecosystem

The Laravel package is built on top of our core PHP library:

Both packages are open-source under the MIT license, created by WooServ Labs.

⚡ Installation 

composer require wooserv/laravel-objectid
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🧱 Usage

Model Example 

use WooServ\LaravelObjectId\Concerns\HasObjectIds;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Post extends Model
{
    use HasObjectIds;
}
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Migration Example 

Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->objectId(); // Creates a 24-char string primary key
    $table->string('title');
    $table->timestamps();
});
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Generate IDs Anywhere 

$id = objectid(); // e.g. 6730b6a0d8a28f890b7c9f40
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🔬 Benchmark Results

Laravel ObjectId Performance (10,000 iterations) 

----------------------------------------------------------
ObjectId             : 0.412 µs per ID
objectid() helper    : 0.417 µs per ID
UUID                 : 1.283 µs per ID
ULID                 : 1.147 µs per ID
----------------------------------------------------------
Fastest: ObjectId 🚀
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Database Insert Benchmark (1,000 inserts) 

----------------------------------------------------------
ObjectId   : 14.78 ms total (0.015 ms/insert)
UUID       : 15.48 ms total (0.015 ms/insert)
ULID       : 15.17 ms total (0.015 ms/insert)
----------------------------------------------------------
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⚔️ ObjectId vs UUID vs ULID

Feature ObjectId UUID ULID
Length 24 chars 36 chars 26 chars
Bytes 12 16 16
Sortable ✅ (timestamp prefix) ❌ ✅
Randomness ✅ ✅ ✅
Readability 🟢 Compact 🔴 Long 🟢 Fair
Speed 🚀 Fastest 🐢 Slowest ⚡ Medium
Works with MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL ✅ ✅ ✅
Requires MongoDB ❌ ❌ ❌

Verdict: ObjectId is the best balance between compactness, performance, and chronological order — and it’s fully compatible with standard SQL databases.

🧠 Why Developers Love It

  • ✅ Automatic assignment — no need to manually generate IDs.
  • ⚙️ Migration macro $table->objectId() — clean and intuitive.
  • 🧩 Framework-agnostic core — works outside Laravel too.
  • 📦 Compact storage — saves DB space compared to UUID.
  • 🕒 Sortable by creation time — built-in timestamp encoding.
  • 🧰 Database-compatible — works with MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL seamlessly.

🌍 Open Source Philosophy

Both packages are released under the MIT License and maintained by WooServ Labs, a collective of developers building open, high-performance PHP tooling for modern web apps.

We believe that open-source should be:

  • Simple to install.
  • Fun to use.
  • Fast by default.

If you share that philosophy — star the repo, contribute, or just spread the word 💫

📎 Resources

⭐ If you like it — give it a Star on GitHub and share it with your fellow Laravel devs!

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