Roke

Roke is a tool and a library to create identifiers. The goal is that these identifiers should be:

• More or less unique.
• Easy to read, so you can read it to someone else over a phone, for example.
• Configurable: not a single format in how they look
• Customizable: it should be easy to do things like "make it work in spanish"

To do this, inspired by a talk about Magic Wormhole ... I did pretty much the same thing they did.

Command Line Tool

By default, Roke will give you identifiers made out of two nouns and a small number. Like this:

$ roke
19-hassock-disregard

You can tell roke to print more than one identifier, so you can choose a nice one.

$ roke --count 5
9-vibrissae-truth
4-bathrobe-somewhere
10-dysfunction-overview
19-aardvark-viola
5-mutt-pamphlet

You can change the format of the identifiers:

$ roke --count 5 --format '{noun}+{noun}'
plate+pasture
pickle+syrup
colloquy+bracelet
prisoner+businessman
membrane+approach

Roke comes with two basic dictionaries:

• "noun" which is a list of english nouns taken from http://www.desiquintans.com/nounlist
• "smallnum" which is the numbers from 1 to 20

You can add more dictionaries by putting files with the ".txt" extension and one word per line in any of the following places:

~/.local/roke
.roke

Python Library

You can use Roke inside your own projects by using it as a library. This example shows how:

>>> import roke
>>> roke.load_dicts()
>>> roke.gen_identifier('{noun}-{smallnum}')
'village-18'

That's all there is to it.

Technical Notes

So, how unique are the identifiers?

If you use the default format {smallnum}-{noun}-{noun} there are only 925 072 020 possible identifiers. So: NOT VERY UNIQUE.

Do not use this as a password or a secret! ... at least not using that format.

They should be unique enough for situations where you just need something to be "unique for a while" in a certain environment. Like, container names, or maybe your children.

Why the name?

Roke is the name of an island in Earthsea. To know more about Roke and names, just read the Earthsea books by Ursula K LeGuin, they are awesome.