Question

I often want to redirect the user or email them a link but I want to mask the parameters in the URL so they can’t tell what extra information is being sent.

For example, if I want to present a link to http://www.example.com/directory/ but I also want to pass extra parameters of an email address and a hash for someone:

Email: [e-mail]

Hash: 22sd359d5823ddg4653dfgfFSG2

I can send them to this link, but I don’t want them to see the parameters:

http://www.example.com/directory/someone%40example.com/22sd359d5823ddg4653dfgfFSG2

So my first thought is just to base64_encode() it, but then you get those stupid == symbols at the end for the extra bytes. And also base64 encoding also generates quite long strings.

Is there an easier, URL-friendly way to encode a string to hide its contents?

How would you normally do this? Is base64_encode() a standard practice?

Answer 1

You could generate a short id and store what it’s suppose to do in the database. So using

http://www.example.com/directory/K2SP26 

for example would store the person’s email address in the database along with where they are supposed to go. Check out http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/create_short_ids_with_php_like_youtube_or_tinyurl/