Node.js Interactive 2025 — UUID Best Practices in Node.js APIs

Node.js Interactive 2025 was held in Dublin, Ireland on September 9–10, 2025. Hosted by the OpenJS Foundation, the event brought together Node.js core contributors, framework maintainers, and backend engineers for two days of talks on performance, security, and API design.

The State of UUID in Node.js

Sessions opened by reviewing the current state: crypto.randomUUID() ships in Node.js 18+ and generates UUID v4 using the platform CSPRNG. It is fast, secure, and requires no npm dependency — but it only generates v4.

The uuid npm package (v9+) fills the gap with v7():

import { v7 as uuidv7 } from 'uuid';

const id = uuidv7(); // "018fbe3a-4c5d-7000-8abc-0123456789ab"

The package implements RFC 9562’s recommended monotonic counter within each millisecond — consecutive calls return lexicographically increasing values even when the system clock has not advanced.

Fastify Integration

Talks on API framework patterns showed how to inject UUID v7 into Fastify route handlers cleanly:

import Fastify from 'fastify';
import { v7 as uuidv7 } from 'uuid';

const app = Fastify();

app.post('/orders', async (request, reply) => {
  const order = {
    id: uuidv7(),
    ...request.body,
  };
  await db.orders.insert(order);
  return reply.code(201).send(order);
});

For Fastify’s request ID generation (used in logs), speakers recommended configuring genReqId to use uuidv7() so request IDs are time-sortable — making log correlation by request ID straightforward without a separate timestamp field:

const app = Fastify({
  genReqId: () => uuidv7(),
  logger: true,
});

Prisma and Drizzle ORM Patterns

A dedicated session covered UUID v7 integration with the two leading TypeScript ORMs.

Prisma with PostgreSQL 18:

model Order {
  id String @id @default(dbgenerated("uuidv7()")) @db.Uuid
}

This pushes generation to the database layer — every insert, whether from Prisma or raw SQL, gets a v7 UUID. For older PostgreSQL versions, generate in the application:

import { v7 as uuidv7 } from 'uuid';

const order = await prisma.order.create({
  data: { id: uuidv7(), customerId, total },
});

Drizzle ORM with $defaultFn:

import { v7 as uuidv7 } from 'uuid';
import { pgTable, uuid } from 'drizzle-orm/pg-core';

export const orders = pgTable('orders', {
  id: uuid('id').primaryKey().$defaultFn(() => uuidv7()),
});

crypto.randomUUID() vs uuid Package

A panel discussion addressed when to use each:

The panel consensus: crypto.randomUUID() is fine for session tokens and idempotency keys where v4 is acceptable. For anything stored as a primary key in a relational database, use the uuid package with v7().

Related Node.js Resources

• uuid npm package — UUID v4 and v7 for Node.js and browsers
• Node.js crypto.randomUUID() documentation
• Fastify documentation
• Prisma ORM documentation
• Drizzle ORM documentation