Shortest possible encoded string with decode possibility (shorten url) using only PHP

Question

I\'m looking for a method that encodes an string to shortest possible length and lets it be decodable (pure PHP, no SQL). I have working sc

Answer 1

In your question you state that it should be pure PHP and not use a database, and there should be a possibility to decode the strings. So bending the rules a bit:

• The way I am interpreting this question is that we don't care about security that much but, we do want the shortest hashes that lead back to images.
• We can also take "decode possibility" with a pinch of salt by using a one way hashing algorithm.
• We can store the hashes inside a JSON object, then store the data in a file, so all we have to do at the end of the day is string matching

```

class FooBarHashing {

    private $hashes;

    private $handle;

    /**
     * In producton this should be outside the web root
     * to stop pesky users downloading it and geting hold of all the keys.
     */
    private $file_name = './my-image-hashes.json';

    public function __construct() {
        $this->hashes = $this->get_hashes();
    }

    public function get_hashes() {
        // Open or create a file.
        if (! file_exists($this->file_name)) {
            fopen($this->file_name, "w");
        }
        $this->handle = fopen($this->file_name, "r");


        $hashes = [];
        if (filesize($this->file_name) > 0) {
            $contents = fread($this->handle, filesize($this->file_name));
            $hashes = get_object_vars(json_decode($contents));
        }

        return $hashes;
    }

    public function __destroy() {
        // Close the file handle
        fclose($this->handle);
    }

    private function update() {
        $handle = fopen($this->file_name, 'w');
        $res = fwrite($handle, json_encode($this->hashes));
        if (false === $res) {
            //throw new Exception('Could not write to file');
        }

        return true;
    }

    public function add_hash($image_file_name) {
        $new_hash = md5($image_file_name, false);

        if (! in_array($new_hash, array_keys($this->hashes) ) ) {
            $this->hashes[$new_hash] =  $image_file_name;
            return $this->update();
        }

        //throw new Exception('File already exists');
    }

    public function resolve_hash($hash_string='') {
        if (in_array($hash_string, array_keys($this->hashes))) {
            return $this->hashes[$hash_string];
        }

        //throw new Exception('File not found');
    }
}

```

Usage example:

add_hash('img=/dir/dir/hi-res-img.jpg&w=700&h=500');

// Then when the user requests the hash the query string is returned.
echo $hashing->resolve_hash('65992be720ea3b4d93cf998460737ac6');

So the end result is a string that is only 32 chars long, which is way shorter than the 52 we had before.