Sometimes you want an alternative to the traditional consecutive database ids i.e. to keep people from walking your site. Below is the code to generate an external id (a random 5 character field) when a model instance is created. I have used this on a couple of sites now and I am pretty happy with it.

models.py

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.contrib.contenttypes import generic
from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
from django.db import models

import random

class YourModelManager(models.Manager):

    @staticmethod
    def _random_id(prefix='', length=5):
        alphabet = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
        for x in range(length):
            prefix += random.choice(alphabet)
        return prefix

    @classmethod
    def _generate_external_id(cls):
        external_id = cls._random_id()
        while (YourModel.objects.filter(external_id=external_id).count() > 0):
            external_id = cls._random_id()
        return external_id

    def create(self, **kwargs):
        kwargs['external_id'] = self._generate_external_id()
        return self.get_query_set().create(**kwargs)

    def get_or_create(self, **kwargs):
        try:
            return self.get_query_set().get(**kwargs), False
        except self.model.DoesNotExist:
            kwargs['external_id'] = self._generate_external_id()
            return self.get_query_set().get_or_create(**kwargs)

class YourModel(models.Model):
    external_id = models.CharField(max_length=5, unique=True)
    objects = YourModelManager()