Example of UUID generation using Boost in C++

I want to generate just random UUID's, as it is just important for instances in my program to have unique identifiers. I looked into Boost UUID, but I can't manage to generate the UUID because I don't understand which class and method to use.

I would appreciate if someone could give me any example of how to achieve this.

2 Answers

A basic example:

#include <boost/uuid/uuid.hpp> // uuid class
#include <boost/uuid/uuid_generators.hpp> // generators
#include <boost/uuid/uuid_io.hpp> // streaming operators etc.
int main() { boost::uuids::uuid uuid = boost::uuids::random_generator()(); std::cout << uuid << std::endl;
}

Example output:

7feb24af-fc38-44de-bc38-04defc3804de

The answer of Georg Fritzsche is ok but maybe a bit misleading. You should reuse the generator if you need more than one uuid. Maybe it's clearer this way:

#include <iostream>
#include <boost/uuid/uuid.hpp> // uuid class
#include <boost/uuid/uuid_generators.hpp> // generators
#include <boost/uuid/uuid_io.hpp> // streaming operators etc.
int main()
{ boost::uuids::random_generator generator; boost::uuids::uuid uuid1 = generator(); std::cout << uuid1 << std::endl; boost::uuids::uuid uuid2 = generator(); std::cout << uuid2 << std::endl; return 0;
}