Sqids (pronounced "squids") is a small library that lets you generate YouTube-looking IDs from numbers. It's good for link shortening, fast & URL-safe ID generation and decoding back into numbers for quicker database lookups.
Features:
- Encode multiple numbers - generate short IDs from one or several non-negative numbers
- Quick decoding - easily decode IDs back into numbers
- Unique IDs - generate unique IDs by shuffling the alphabet once
- ID padding - provide minimum length to make IDs more uniform
- URL safe - auto-generated IDs do not contain common profanity
- Randomized output - Sequential input provides nonconsecutive IDs
- Many implementations - Support for 40+ programming languages
Good for:
- Generating IDs for public URLs (eg: link shortening)
- Generating IDs for internal systems (eg: event tracking)
- Decoding for quicker database lookups (eg: by primary keys)
Not good for:
- Sensitive data (this is not an encryption library)
- User IDs (can be decoded revealing user count)
Sqids is available on LuaRocks:
luarocks install sqids-lua
local Sqids = require("sqids")
local sqids = Sqids.new()
local encoded = sqids:encode({ 1, 2, 3 }) -- 86Rf07
local decoded = sqids:decode(encoded) -- 1, 2, 3
Enforce a minimum length for IDs:
local Sqids = require("sqids")
local sqids = Sqids.new({
minLength = 10,
})
local id = sqids:encode({ 1, 2, 3 }) -- 86Rf07xd4z
local numbers = sqids:decode(id) -- [1, 2, 3]