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I’m looking to add basic licensing to my application. I want to take in the user’s name as a parameter and return a unique, fixed length code (sort of like MD5)
What are some algorithms that can do this?
Thanks
The SHA algorithms should be decent for this (SHA-1, SHA-512, etc…). They are used in a lot of places where an MD5 could also be used but seem to be more well respected. I use them for password hashing, but sounds like their functionality as a 1-way hash would be good for this as well.
If you want fixed sized, you might then Base64 encode the resulting bytes and take the first N digits that you want. Even though you are losing some of the original hash, that should give you a large enough set of distinct possible keys that you are virtually impossible to get a repeat. As a frame of reference, this is a an example of a Base64 encoded UUID: “iFHqaiNjhTDpxp7ahBPX0A “
The possible result set of a UUID is so large that it is accepted practice to randomly generate them with the expectation that they are unique (I know this is surprising, but do a search).