Question

I have a form that I have users fill out and then it gets e-mailed to me.

I am trying to get an example of how I would create an ID (based on my own conventions) that I can use to keep track of responses (and send back to the user so they can reference it later).

This is the convention I am striving for:

[YEAR]-[SERVICE CODE]-[DATE(MMDD)]-[TIME]

For example: “2012-ABC-0204-1344”. I figured to add the TIME convention in the instance that two different users pick the same service on the same date rather than try to figure out how to only apply it IF two users picked the same service on the same date.

So, the scenario is that after the user goes through my wizards inputting their information and then click “Submit” that this unique ID would be created and attached to the model. Maybe something like @Model.UniqueID so that in an e-mail response I send to the user it shows up and says “Reference this ID for any future communication”.

Thanks for any advice/help/examples.

Answer 1

In your post action

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(YourModel model)
{
   model.UniqueId = GenerateUniqueId(serviceCode); 
}

public string GenerateUniqueId(string serviceCode)
{
   return string.Format("{0}-{1}-{2}", DateTime.Now.Year, serviceCode, Guid.NewGuid().ToString().Replace("-",""); //remove dashes so its fits into your convention
}

but this seems as I’m missing part of your question. If you really want unique, use a Guid. This is what we’ve used in the past to give to customers – a guid or a portion of one. IF you use a portion of one ensure you have logic to handle a duplicate key. You don’t need to worry about this though if using a full guid. If the idea is just to give to a customer then ignore the rest of the data and just use a guid, since it can easily be looked up in the database.