UUIDs in Vim with Ruby/JavaScript 🆔

UUID's (universally unique identifiers) are really handy. I use them for all sorts of things, like key props in a React map, and I like to have them easily accessible when writing code.

Today I wrote two Vim mappings to support this workflow. I can shell out to Ruby and use SecureRandom:

" Insert a UUID with Ruby
nnoremap ruid :read !ruby -e "require 'securerandom'; p SecureRandom.uuid"<cr>

Or, if you're happier in the JavaScript ecosystem, here's a similar command using Node and the uuid library. I did not have to install uuid, it was already available to me.

" Insert a UUID with JS
nnoremap juid :read !node -e "var uuid = require('uuid'); console.log(uuid.v4())"<cr>