Generate ID from string in Python

I would do something like this:

>>> import hashlib
>>> m = hashlib.md5()
>>> m.update("some string")
>>> str(int(m.hexdigest(), 16))[0:12]
'120665287271'

The idea:

1. Calculate the hash of a string with MD5 (or SHA-1 or ...) in hexadecimal form (see module hashlib)
2. Convert the string into an integer and reconvert it to a String with base 10 (there are just digits in the result)
3. Use the first 12 characters of the string.

If characters a-f are also okay, I would do m.hexdigest()[0:12].