flake
====
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flake is a [Go](https://golang.org/) package that provides a very simple twitter
snowflake ID generator along with several functions to convert an ID into 
different formats.

## Getting Started

### Installing

This assumes you already have a working Go environment, if not please see
[this page](https://golang.org/doc/install) first.

```sh
go get github.com/bwmarrin/flake
```

### Usage

Import the package into your project then construct a new flake Node using a
unique node number from 0 to 1023.  With the node object call the Generate()
method to generate and return a unique snowflake ID.

**Example Program:**

```go
package main

import (
        "fmt"
        "github.com/bwmarrin/flake"
)

func main() {

        // Create a new Node with a Node number of 1
        node, err := flake.NewNode(1)
        if err != nil {
                fmt.Println(err)
                return
        }

        // Generate a snowflake ID.
        id, err := node.Generate()
        if err != nil {
                fmt.Println(err)
                return
        }

        // Print out the ID in a few different ways.
        fmt.Printf("Int64  ID: %d\n", id)
        fmt.Printf("String ID: %s\n", id)
        fmt.Printf("Base2  ID: %s\n", id.Base2())
        fmt.Printf("Base64 ID: %s\n", id.Base64())

        // Print out the ID's timestamp
        fmt.Printf("ID Time  : %d\n", id.Time())

        // Print out the ID's node number
        fmt.Printf("ID Node  : %d\n", id.Node())

        // Print out the ID's sequence number
        fmt.Printf("ID Step  : %d\n", id.Step())
}
```

### Performance

The flake generator should be sufficiently fast enough of most systems to 
generate the maximum or near of 4096 unique ID's per millisecond that the 
snowflake ID supports. That is, around 243-244 nanoseconds per operation. 

Since the flake generator is single threaded the primary limitation will be
the maximum speed of a single processor on your system.

To benchmark the generator on your system run the following command inside the
package directory.

```sh
go test -bench=.
```

Also, if your curious, check out this commit that shows benchmarks that compare
a few different ways of implementing a generator.
*  https://github.com/bwmarrin/flake/tree/9befef8908df13f4102ed21f42b083dd862b5036