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Asked: 2026-05-19T22:21:15+00:00

I want to make a URL shortener that has this URL format: http://myurlshortner.com/ {id}

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I want to make a URL shortener that has this URL format:
http://myurlshortner.com/{id}

Where the id is unique and generated from the following place-value notation sequence/system/series:

0
1
2
.
.
.
9
a
b
c
.
.
.
z

For example: http://myurlshortner.com/1b6z

For saving the entry to database, I want to make id the primary key(or unique field) that increments with every new entry and follows the above mentioned sequence. How can I do this?

For data storage, I will use Amazon SimpleDB. So there won’t be any stored procedures or other DBMS functionality like there are in MySQL that I can use.

This is exactly(almost) like how URL shortners like http://tinyurl.com and http://bit.ly work.

…and I am coding in PHP. I hope you understand my question.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can achieve what you want by just converting a normal base 10 id to base 36.

    Base 36 uses the numerals 0-9 and then the letters A-Z.

    You can do the conversion before storing it in the database and use the converted number as the id, or just use a normal base 10 auto increment and do the conversion in your code.

    See: http://php.net/manual/en/function.base-convert.php

    php > echo base_convert(123456789, 10, 36);
21i3v9
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