A quick way to create short, unique, and human readable IDs.
let id = SCBase62Generator().makeb62(length: 6)
print(id) // u8eLldYou can pass a length value (int) to the
lengthparameter.
If you are unsure of many characters to use, read the explanation for context.
Download and include the source file in your xcode project. It's not a very large file (at just 2.38 KB).
I looped SCBase62Generator 10 times using the following code.
for i in stride(from: 0, through: 9, by: 1) {
// Get id 6 characters long
let id = SCBase62Generator().makeb62(length: 6)
print("\(id)")
}This was the output:
DvKYUC
sNqQTL
aKxM9R
tWnlb9
FQQo5V
iXwp0j
NvUAdv
us7tds
2YjuOX
VTY1FC
I wrote SCBase62Generator because I needed short and unique ids that didn't look nefarious.
If you generate a 6 character random string, then there are 626 = 56,800,235,584 possible combinations of the base 62 character set. That means if you generated a unique id once every second, it would take more than 657,000 days, or 1800+ years, to run out (please see my warning).
The character set I use is alphanumerical. Including both upper and lower cases, there are 62 alphanumerical characters in the set.
I looked into Base64 encoding, but it gives /'s and that is not acceptable for URL use-cases.
I should warn you that there is no guarantee that SCBase62Generator will be collision proof. You should use a database to keep track of existing ids.
MIT