PHP Snowflake

Snowflake IDs in PHP, with optional first-class Laravel integration.

Snowflake IDs provide distributed, time-based unique identifiers that avoid the pitfalls of traditional auto-incrementing IDs, and offer a cleaner alternative to large ULIDs/UUIDs. They enable efficient sorting, reduce database contention, and work well in distributed environments.

PHP-Snowflake prioritises timestamp accuracy over extensive sequencing. By using a microsecond-precise timestamp, it significantly reduces the chances of generating sequentially enumerable IDs — a common issue with standard Snowflake and ULID implementations when producing multiple IDs per second or millisecond.

The ID structure (default signature — configurable via configureSignature()):

• Timestamp (50 bits) — precise ordering and uniqueness
• Cluster (5 bits) & Worker (5 bits) — distributed ID generation
• Sequence (3 bits) — up to 8 unique IDs per microsecond (more if you shrink cluster/worker bits)

Documentation

• Installation
• Usage
• Concurrency
• Testing
• Laravel integration

Requirements

• PHP 8.4+
• Laravel 13+ (optional, for the Eloquent / config integration)

Quick start

composer require bradietilley/php-snowflake

use BradieTilley\Snowflake\Snowflake;

Snowflake::configure('2025-01-01 00:00:00', cluster: 1, worker: 1);

echo Snowflake::id(); // 9048372019229466888

See Installation and Usage for the full walkthrough.

Comparison

Feature	Auto-Inc IDs	UUIDs	ULIDs	Traditional Snowflake	This package
Easy to read/copy/relay	✅ Yes	❌ No	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Stored as BIGINT	✅ Yes	❌ No	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Hides table count	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Globally scalable	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Protects enumeration…	❌ No	✅ Yes (ms)	✅ Yes (ms)	✅ Yes (ms)	✅ Yes (μs)
Sortable by time	✅ Yes	✅ Yes (if time-sorted)	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Suitable for Primary/Foreign Key	✅ Yes	❌ No	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Can be sent as number in JSON	✅ Yes (until 2^53)	❌ String	❌ String	❌ String	❌ String