CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyruby-on-rails-3
AnApprentice
AnApprentice

Reputation: 110950

How do you create a unique identifier for users for tracking purposes?

I would like to be able to add a user referal params on all invite links sent out from my site... example:

http://site.com/invited_by?=ajraux

How can I generate a code that is short like "ajraux" for all users on my site? Does it need to be a field in the database? Can it be created on the spot? How are web companies doing this?

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 550

Answers (3)

Simpleton
Simpleton

Reputation: 6415

As cjapes said, using ID is not a good solution and mu is too short's answer is good for most cases. However if you have a site which offers vanity URLs, like about.me does then each user will have a permalink kind of column storing their vanity URL. You can just use the value from that column when building the URL.

On the receiving end you can do:

@referring_friend = User.find_by_permalink(params[:permalink])

Upvotes: 0

mu is too short
mu is too short

Reputation: 434596

You could create random numbers and encode them in base-36, something simple like this:

rand(1e12).to_s(36)

Generate one for each user on first use and store it with the user. Add a unique constraint on your random token (in both your model and the database) and generate a new one if you get a uniqueness violation. You might want to log a warning somewhere that you'll see it if you need to try more than, say, five times to get a unique value; if you start getting a lot of warnings then bump that 1e12 up to 1e15 (or higher).

That would give you a random looking token attached to each user, the tokens would be URL-safe, they're quick and easy to generate, you shouldn't get that many collisions, and it will be easy to backtrack from a token to the user.

Upvotes: 4

cjapes
cjapes

Reputation: 97

One way of doing this is to use the unique identifier of the user, say "id", that's in the database, but this is also dangerous because you are revealing too much about your database.

So you can add a twist to the previous situation and encrypt and decrypt the id so that when it's in the url it is encrypted and then when you receive it you can decrypt it and use it.

Upvotes: 0

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