I am looking to create a random username based on a set of existing phrases plus an integer since there can be multiple users with the same phrase. For now lets assume there's 12 phrases such as AnonymousPotato
, so a user who signs up could randomly receive AnonymousPotato12345
as a unique username. The user would be stored in a MySQL table that has an auto incremented int primary key. I thought of using the id, but I don't think exposing the user's id is a good idea as it might expose information such as how many users exist.
The issue I am trying to work out is collision. How can I ensure the username generated is unique without having to expose an auto incremented database ID?
If you want to ensure its unique, two ways immediately come to mind:
pre-generate 1,000,000 unique user names (or whatever amount you think you might need). When a user signs up, pull one from the list and mark it as used.
After generating one, simply check if it is already in the database, and if it is, try again, and keep trying until you have a unique one.
I agree with you, you probably shouldn't use the user id as a public ID. What I usually do is assign a public facing guid (in a column I call 'public_hash', usually a hash of the user name and some other info) to that user, which gets used in public facing urls.