Generate random hash

Problem
MongoDB generates 96 bit hash values that are used as primary keys. In a project of mine I also needed randomly generated primary keys so I decided to go the MongoDB way. So the question is: how to generate 96 bit hash values with Python?

Solution

#!/usr/bin/env python

import random


def my_hash(bits=96):
    assert bits % 8 == 0
    required_length = bits / 8 * 2
    s = hex(random.getrandbits(bits)).lstrip('0x').rstrip('L')
    if len(s) < required_length:
        return my_hash(bits)
    else:
        return s


def main():
    for _ in range(3):
        print my_hash()

#########################################################

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Sample output:

f4bf4a4c949d7beee38d84a3
457ef2f29f462a4f1e54b61e
dc921ad1e6c32bc8ce8503c8

Another (but about 3.5 times slower) solution:

def my_hash(bits=96):
    assert bits % 8 == 0
    return os.urandom(bits/8).encode('hex')

urandom needs the number of bytes as its parameter.

Tips from here.

Update (20130813)
I found a related work called SimpleFlake. SimpleFlake generates 64 bit IDs, where the ID is prefixed with a millisecond timestamp and the remaining bits are completely random. It has the advantage that IDs show the chronological order of ID creation.

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