Question

I want to hash/encode a unique integer (database ID) to create a similarly unique string.

It needs to meet the following requirements:

1. Must start with a letter or number, and can contain only letters and numbers.
2. All letters in a container name must be lowercase.
3. Must be from 3 through 63 characters long (although the shorter the better)

The result does not need to be reversible, just repeatable – so a 1-way hash would be fine.

Answer 1

A simple solution would be a base 36 encoding. The output will be a string between one and six characters.

public static string EncodeBase36(int i)
{
  Contract.Requires<ArgumentException>(i>=0);
  //Base conversion
  string s="";
  while(i!=0)
  {
    int digit = i % 36;
    i/=36;
    if(digit<10)
      s=((char)('0'+digit)).ToString()+s;
    else
      s=((char)('a'+digit-10)).ToString()+s;
  }
  // Enforce minimum length
  while(s.Length<3)
  {
    s = "0" + s;
  }
  return s;
}