# How are local IDs supposed to be used?

**URL:** <https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/how-are-local-ids-supposed-to-be-used/2789>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [March 6, 2024, 5:23pm UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/how-are-local-ids-supposed-to-be-used/2789 "2024-03-06T17:23:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![jelhan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discuss.jsonapi.org/jelhan/32/822_2.png) [@jelhan](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/jelhan)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2024, 7:11pm UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/how-are-local-ids-supposed-to-be-used/2789/4 "2024-04-10T19:11:08Z")

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A note explaining intent of local identifiers / `lid` may be helpful indeed. I created [Explain intent of local identifiers in a note in the spec · Issue #1740 · json-api/json-api · GitHub](https://github.com/json-api/json-api/issues/1740) to track it.

The assumption was that many extensions need local identifiers. It was added to base specification to avoid multiple solutions to the same problem and compatibility issues. If I got it right. @dgeb feel free to correct me as I wasn’t part of the discussions at that time.

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