Re: Shorten String or encode/decode a string

On Thursday 03 May 2001 21:25, Jared Howard wrote: > I want to shorten a string that I'll be throwing through the url. It's > not so much that it's too long, but it's ugly. What it is, is my query > string that I need to pass through to different pages, i.e. viewing > multiple pages. Anyway, I was looking at encode and decode features but > not really sure that they could shorten it down significantly. Now I > understand that I won't be able to use it, but I tried the crypt() > function and liked how small it made it. The string information *g* Yess, crypt() even manages to crunch down megabytes of data to about 10 bytes. The problem is that it is a one-way function, i.e. you can't decrypt the data afterwards (it's a kind of checksum generator)... You should use sessions or something similar - instead of passing all the data around on each request, store it in a database and just pass around the record ID -- Christian Reiniger LGDC Webmaster (http://sunsite.dk/lgdc/) ..to paraphrase Churchill, while representative democracy may be terrible, it's still the best system that large corporations can buy. - David Weinberger JOHO January 25, 2000