How can i generate a unique string from the post title in my C# code ? Similar to the one which appears in the url of this post.
+16
A:
The string doesn't need to be unique, actually : if you check the URL of this post :
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1467402/generate-a-unique-string-from-the-post-title-like-stackoverflow
The "real" unique part is the number -- here, 1467402 : it looks like the identifier of the question in the database ; probably some kind of auto-increment / sequence, which is ensured to be unique by the database server.
Actually, you can try to check by yourself if the "title" part matters : go to this URL :
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1467402/glop
Even though the "title" part is obviously not here, that URL this gets you to this post ;-)
The "title" appearing in the URL is here for two reasons :
- more user friendly URLs, of course
- more search-engines / better for referencement URLs, too
To generate this, a couple of thing to do :
- replace non-ascii characters ; for instance, 'é' will most likely be translated to 'e'
- replace the other characters you can't replace nicely by '-' as a word-separator.
Pascal MARTIN
2009-09-23 17:15:31
+1 - I never thought about that number being the database id.
James Black
2009-09-23 17:16:22
I'll admit, I lol'd at "glop"... I may need more sleep.
Greg Hurlman
2009-09-23 17:17:42
@James : using an auto-increment in database looks like the easier way to me (and it's what I generally use), so, just guessing, but why not ;;; @Greg : I need more sleep too, actually ^^
Pascal MARTIN
2009-09-23 17:19:42
Take note: Even though it is optional, the unique string **is** directly associated with url. Check out the canonical element in the source of stackoverflow.com/questions/1467402 . Little things like that make search engines happier.
Brian
2009-09-23 17:23:19
does glop mean anything or is it you just randomly selecting 4 characters? ;)
ming yeow
2010-09-01 19:21:53
@ming it's not random : in France, some many years ago, there was a comic with a dog called Pifou that said "glop glop !" when he was happy *(or something was nice)*, and "pas glop ! pas glop !" *("not glop !")* when he wasn't *(or something wasn't ok)* -- a search for "pifou" on google images should get you some examples ;-) ;;; I often use "glop" where/when someone else could say "foo" or "bar", except those are not used in french.
Pascal MARTIN
2010-09-01 20:27:12
+1
A:
They just replace spaces with a dash, but then you will want to make certain that doesn't already exist.
If it does exist, just add a number to the end.
You notice that they have a number before the unique string, which will reduce the chance of a collision.
You could generate that based on the julian date (number day in the year) and a year, for example.
James Black
2009-09-23 17:15:34
A:
Phil Haack posted on this subject in this entry.
You could do something similar but more generic (add an incrementing number on the end).
Will
2009-09-23 17:15:52
A:
If the post titles are unique just use those. Or you could create a message digest signature.
see: http://www.obviex.com/samples/hash.aspx for the long answer.
Lance Rushing
2009-09-23 17:19:26