pg_hashids: Short UIDs

pg_hashids provides a secure way to generate short, unique, non-sequential ids from numbers. The hashes are intended to be small, easy-to-remember identifiers that can be used to obfuscate data (optionally) with a password, alphabet, and salt. For example, you may wish to hide data like user IDs, order numbers, or tracking codes in favor of pg_hashid's unique identifiers.

Enable the extension#

1. Go to the Database page in the Dashboard.
2. Click on Extensions in the sidebar.
3. Search for "pg_hashids" and enable the extension.

Usage#

Suppose we have a table that stores order information, and we want to give customers a unique identifier without exposing the sequential id column. To do this, we can use pg_hashid's id_encode function.

1create table orders (2  id serial primary key,3  description text,4  price_cents bigint5);67insert into orders (description, price_cents)8values ('a book', 9095);910select11  id,12  id_encode(id) as short_id,13  description,14  price_cents15from16  orders;1718  id | short_id | description | price_cents19----+----------+-------------+-------------20  1 | jR       | a book      |        909521(1 row)

To reverse the short_id back into an id, there is an equivalent function named id_decode.

Resources#

• Official pg_hashids documentation