Atomic Counter

Overview

atomic-counter is a rust library for generating a monotonically increasing sequence of integers. Depending on the particular configuration of the counter, the generated sequence will be produce unique numbers down to the nanosecond, regardless of memory state. E.g. if you quit the process and recreate a new counter >1ns later, your sequence is guaranteed to still be monotonically increasing (but with a gap).

Usage

from atomic_counter import Counter

c = Counter(offset_in_nanos, base_in_nanos)

c.next()  # generate next number in sequence

Here, base is the counter's 0 value (e.g. a epoch in nanos to consider the 0 point, to keep numbers as small as possible if you do not need to go back to 1970). offset is the number of nanos since base at which to start.

If unset, base will be 2010-01-01 in nanos, offset will be 0, which means the counter will start at (now - 2010/01/01) as nanos.

To create e.g. a daily counter, pass in base=today in nanos. As this is a common occurrence for sequences that reset daily, a convenience function def daily() -> Counter: is provided.