shorter php cipher than md5?

php variables encryption cryptography md5
tiredofcoding picture tiredofcoding · Sep 21, 2010 · Viewed 21.9k times · Source

For a variety of stupid reasons, the maximum length of a given form variable that we are posting to an external server is 12 characters.

I wanted to obscure that value with md5, but obviously with 12 characters that isn't going to work. Is there a cipher with an already-made PHP function which will result in something 12 characters or less?

The security and integrity of the cipher isn't super important here. My last resort is to just write a function which moves each letter up or down an ascii value by x. So the goal isn't to obscure it from a cryptography expert, but just to not post it in plain text so a non-technical worker looking at it won't know what it is.

Thanks for any advice.

Answer

Codebutcher picture Codebutcher · Feb 19, 2015

maybe this will help you generate a 12 char string that you can pass in a URL, without increasing the risk of collisions

substr(base_convert(md5($string), 16,32), 0, 12);

Related questions

"Notice: Undefined variable", "Notice: Undefined index", and "Notice: Undefined offset" using PHP

I'm running a PHP script and continue to receive errors like: Notice: Undefined variable: my_variable_name in C:\wamp\www\mypath\index.php on line 10 Notice: Undefined index: my_index C:\wamp\www\mypath\index.php on line 11 Line 10 …

Read More
How to add elements to an empty array in PHP?

If I define an array in PHP such as (I don't define its size): $cart = array(); Do I simply add elements to it using the following? $cart[] = 13; $cart[] = "foo"; $cart[] = obj; Don't arrays in PHP have an add method, for …

Read More
PHP Pass variable to next page

It seems pretty simple but I can't find a good way to do it. Say in the first page I create a variable $myVariable = "Some text"; And the form's action for that page is "Page2.php". So in Page2.php, …

Read More