How to use UUIDs in URLs in Laravel

In my previous post, I told why you shouldn’t expose your default incrementing IDs, because of security and other issues. Luckily there are some solutions for this problem: slugs and UUIDs.

If you want to read more about slugs, you can read more about it here.

In this post, I’m going to show you how you can configure UUIDs with Laravel. Then you’ll get URLs like these:

http://www.example.org/orders/065e9fb3-6bec-494c-9917-4ab8e71750d4
http://www.example.org/users/d3835dda-e08f-4ed5-baff-756d62a749b2
http://www.example.org/images/avatar-d54a923b-c5d4-4294-8033-a221a57ef361.jpg

Migrations

First, we’ll have to add a uuid column in the migration. Laravel has a UUID column available that we can use.

// database/migrations/create_posts_table.php
Schema::create('posts',  function  (Blueprint  $table)  {
    $table->id();
    $table->uuid('uuid')->unique(); // <-- Add the UUID column in your migration
    $table->string('title');
    $table->text('body');
    $table->timestamps();
});

Models

Next, every time a model (for example a post) is created, we want to automatically assign a UUID to it. We can do that in the boot model of our model.

// app/Models/Post.php
use Illuminate\Support\Str;
protected  static  function  boot()
{
    parent::boot();
    
    static::creating(function  ($model)  {
        $model->uuid = (string) Str::uuid();
    });
}

Factories

If you are using model factories to quickly create test models, you don’t have to add anything to them because the boot method will run when using factories too.

Routing

The last step is to update the routes file. Every time you use Route Model Binding in your routes/web.php file add :uuid at the end:

// routes/web.php
Route::get('/posts/{post:uuid}', [PostController::class, 'show'])
    ->name('posts.show');

Now Laravel will automatically use the UUID column for routing.

URLs

If you use URLs, you’ll have to update your routes everywhere. For example:

// resources/views/posts/index.blade.php
<ul>
    @foreach($posts as $post)
        <li>
            <a href="{{ url('/posts/' . $post->uuid) }}">
                {{ $post->title }}
            </a>
        </li>
    @endforeach
</ul>

Route helper

If you’re using the route helper method, you don't have to change anything! For example:

// resources/views/posts/index.blade.php
<ul>
    @foreach($posts as $post)
        <li>
            <a href="{{ route('posts.show', $post) }}">
                {{ $post->title }}
            </a>
        </li>
    @endforeach
</ul>

Conclusion

As you can see, using Laravel it’s very easy to use UUIDs and hide your incrementing IDs. I hope you liked this post, and if you did, you can subscribe to my newsletter below.