URL safe UUIDs in the smallest number of characters
language-agnostic, uuid
Solution
Base-64 is good for this.
{098ef7bc-a96c-43a9-927a-912fc7471ba2}
could be encoded as
vPeOCWypqUOSepEvx0cbog
The usual equal-signs at the end could be dropped, as they always make the string-length a multiple of 4. And instead of `+` and `/`, you could use some safe characters. You can pick two from: `-` `.` `_` `~`
More information:
- RFC 4648
- Storing UUID as base64 String (Java)
- guid to base64, for URL (C#)
- Short GUID (C#)
Problem
Ideally I would want something like `example.com/resources/äFg4вNгё5`, minimum number of visible characters, never mind that they have to be percent encoded before transmitting them over HTTP. Can you tell a scheme which encodes 128b UUIDs into the least number of visible characters efficiently, without the results having characters which break URLs?