Hashids in R

An R port of the hashids library. hashids generates YouTube-like ids (hashes) from integers or vector of integers. Hashes generated from integers are relatively short, unique and non-sequential and can be used to generate unique ids for URLs and hide database row numbers from the user. By default hashids will avoid generating common English cursewords by preventing certain letters being next to each other.

For example, integers like 1, 2 and 3 will be encoded as strings like NV, 6m and yD respectively. Vectors like c(1, 2, 3, 4) will be encoded as a string like agHLu9hm and c(1, 1, 1, 1) as 2bHEH5HY.

Why should I use Hashids?

1. Unguessable: incremental numbers encoded to prevent predictability.
2. Unique: no need to worry about hash collisions.
3. Customizable: custom alphabet and salt to customize generated hashids.
4. Two way function: decoding is done as easily as encoding.
5. Can specify minimum length for hashid.
6. By default, prevents curse words from being generated.

Why should I NOT use Hashids?

• hashids is NOT cryptographically secure -- do NOT use to encode passwords.
• hashids is NOT cryptographically secure -- DO NOT USE TO ENCODE PASSWORDS.
• hashids is NOT CRYPTOGRAPHICALLY SECURE -- DO NOT USE TO ENCODE PASSWORDS!

Other restrictions

1. Can only encode integers -- this is to prevent you from doing something stupid. Like encoding sensitive information.
2. Integers must be non-negative.

Installing

This package is now on CRAN! Install using install.packages("hashids"). Alteratively you can install using devtools to install the github version. If you don't have devtools install using install.packages('devtools') from your R session. Install using devtools::install_github('ALShum/hashids-r').

Summary

The following are the most relevant functions:

1. hashid_settings: used to set minimum length, salt, custom alphabet and custom guard.

2. encode: gives encoded string given integer and settings list from hashid_settings.

3. decode: gives integer given encoded string and settings list from hashid_settings.

4. encode_hex: similar to encode but works with hexadecimal.

5. decode_hex: similar to decode but works with hexadecimal.

Example

Set your salt, min_length and any other settings using the hashid_settings function -- this will generate a list of important parameters for encoding and decoding:

h = hashid_settings(salt = 'this is my salt', min_length = 5)

Encode requires an integer and the settings as a list of parameters:

encode(1234, h ) #"ABBQA"

encode(c(1, 2, 3, 4), h) #"agHLu9hm"

Decode follows a similar workflow:

decode("ABBQA", h) #1234

decode("agHLu9hm", h) #c(1, 2, 3, 4)

About

hashids was originally written by Ivan Akimov. This version hashids was translated along with some of the unit tests from python version of hashids written by David Aurelio. For more information please go to http://www.hashids.org.

Compatibility

Compatible with version 1.0.* of the javascript version of hashids.

Contact

Does my code suck? Contact me and tell me! @notalexshum on twitter more info about me @ http://www.ALShum.com.