Generate a unique id

Here is a 'YouTube-video-id' like id generator e.g. "UcBKmq2XE5a"

StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
Enumerable
   .Range(65, 26)
    .Select(e => ((char)e).ToString())
    .Concat(Enumerable.Range(97, 26).Select(e => ((char)e).ToString()))
    .Concat(Enumerable.Range(0, 10).Select(e => e.ToString()))
    .OrderBy(e => Guid.NewGuid())
    .Take(11)
    .ToList().ForEach(e => builder.Append(e));
string id = builder.ToString();

It creates random ids of size 11 characters. You can increase/decrease that as well, just change the parameter of Take method.

0.001% duplicates in 100 million.

Why don't use GUID?

Guid guid = Guid.NewGuid();
string str = guid.ToString();

Why can't we make a unique id as below.

We can use DateTime.Now.Ticks and Guid.NewGuid().ToString() to combine together and make a unique id.

As the DateTime.Now.Ticks is added, we can find out the Date and Time in seconds at which the unique id is created.

Please see the code.

var ticks = DateTime.Now.Ticks;
var guid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
var uniqueSessionId = ticks.ToString() +'-'+ guid; //guid created by combining ticks and guid

var datetime = new DateTime(ticks);//for checking purpose
var datetimenow = DateTime.Now;    //both these date times are different.

We can even take the part of ticks in unique id and check for the date and time later for future reference.

Why not just use ToString?

public string generateID()
{
    return Guid.NewGuid().ToString("N");
}

If you would like it to be based on a URL, you could simply do the following:

public string generateID(string sourceUrl)
{
    return string.Format("{0}_{1:N}", sourceUrl, Guid.NewGuid());
}

If you want to hide the URL, you could use some form of SHA1 on the sourceURL, but I'm not sure what that might achieve.