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dxid
dxid/index.js

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Readme

dxid A better and safer way to display your primary keys in urls or to the users

In a relational database, the "ID column" is used to uniquely identify each row in a table. This column is often referred to as a primary key column and it's used to establish relationships between tables, enforce data integrity, and optimize query performance.

dxid is a display format that is usually more compact and includes a checksum to prevent any errors when as developers we type it.

for instance (using the cli):

$npx xdid 1984 -> ke_
$npx xdid 42 -> Xp

it is filename and url safe so you can use it either to display to the end user, in a url or as as filename (eg cache).

This repository contains an implementation in javascript with no dependency that can be used either as a library or as a cli, and you are encouraged to implement it on your favourite language.

usage

problems we are trying to solve

ids are machine-friendly, but they have some issues when used in an url or as a reference and become exposed to users, like

student 1984
invoice 42

Numbers without meanings

As humans, We expects numbers to mean something, to have a unit and some meaning. As software engineers, we probably all had to explain to a user that the id is not:

a year
an amount
the total number of invoices
the room number of the student
the total number of [insert the name of your entity]
...

but that it's just a meaningless number to identify a unique object.

In the US, I've seen the number prefixed with #, but that is not a known convention in Europe, and I had to explain that #42 doesn't mean that it's not 42 usd and it's not a typo that I put # instead of $.

easy to make mistakes

As soon as the id becomes a slightly big and that we need to type it, we are going to make mistake. it's the reason a credit card number has a checksum to prevent typos.

dxid includes a checksum too, but because each character contains more information (64 instead of 10 for a number), we usually end up with the same length or shorter.

implementation details

We have used two safe and common algorithms:

the number is encoded using base64url (so xdid can be used without encoding in your url)
it's prefixed with a checksum, the luhn mode 64 of the encoded id

luhn code is what is used on your credit card checksum for instance. It detect all single-digit errors, as well as almost all transpositions of adjacent digits, and is very simple to implement.

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

I would love to have someone implementing it as a postgresql or mysql function, that would make it easier to use in pretty much all applications, but any implementation in any language is welcome.

If you have a suggestion that would make this better, please fork the repo and create a pull request. You can also simply open an issue with the tag "enhancement". Don't forget to give the project a star! Thanks again!

Fork the Project
Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
Open a Pull Request

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

dxid