Creating identifiers
--------------------

The following filters allow to create identifiers.

Hashids
^^^^^^^

`Hashids <https://hashids.org/>`_ allow to convert sequences of integers to short unique string identifiers. This filter needs the `hashids Python library <https://pypi.org/project/hashids/>`_ installed on the controller.

.. code-block:: yaml+jinja

    - name: "Create hashid"
      debug:
        msg: "{{ [1234, 5, 6] | community.general.hashids_encode }}"

    - name: "Decode hashid"
      debug:
        msg: "{{ 'jm2Cytn' | community.general.hashids_decode }}"

This produces:

.. code-block:: ansible-output

    TASK [Create hashid] **********************************************************************
    ok: [localhost] => {
        "msg": "jm2Cytn"
    }

    TASK [Decode hashid] **********************************************************************
    ok: [localhost] => {
        "msg": [
            1234,
            5,
            6
        ]
    }

The hashids filters accept keyword arguments to allow fine-tuning the hashids generated:

:salt: String to use as salt when hashing.
:alphabet: String of 16 or more unique characters to produce a hash.
:min_length: Minimum length of hash produced.

.. versionadded: 3.0.0

Random MACs
^^^^^^^^^^^

You can use the ``random_mac`` filter to complete a partial `MAC address <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address>`_ to a random 6-byte MAC address.

.. code-block:: yaml+jinja

    - name: "Create a random MAC starting with ff:"
      debug:
        msg: "{{ 'FF' | community.general.random_mac }}"

    - name: "Create a random MAC starting with 00:11:22:"
      debug:
        msg: "{{ '00:11:22' | community.general.random_mac }}"

This produces:

.. code-block:: ansible-output

    TASK [Create a random MAC starting with ff:] **********************************************
    ok: [localhost] => {
        "msg": "ff:69:d3:78:7f:b4"
    }

    TASK [Create a random MAC starting with 00:11:22:] ****************************************
    ok: [localhost] => {
        "msg": "00:11:22:71:5d:3b"
    }

You can also initialize the random number generator from a seed to create random-but-idempotent MAC addresses:

.. code-block:: yaml+jinja

    "{{ '52:54:00' | community.general.random_mac(seed=inventory_hostname) }}"