How to make unique short URL with Python?

Question

How can I make unique URL in Python a la http://imgur.com/gM19g or http://tumblr.com/xzh3bi25y When using uuid from python I get a very large one. I want something shorter f

Answer 1

It doesn't really matter that this is Python, but you just need a hash function that maps to the length you want. For example, maybe use MD5 and then take just the first n characters. You'll have to watch out for collisions in that case, though, so you might want to pick something a little more robust in terms of collision detection (like using primes to cycle through the space of hash strings).