Hi Justin, Yes, I admit the project sounds pretty screwy. The project is needed for a clients son, he's a small twerp who wanted something like this and since this is an old client who gave us quite a bit of business, rather than say no and upset him...I took this on.
The key has to be a max of 4 chars and minimum of 1.. It has to be 1-9999 and a-z. I am well aware its easily "crackable" but its for a kids game so...who cares? According to the game, when you go to one address it tells you where to go from there...going 1 after one will not make sense as the messages will then be screwy. Since its for kids and REAL security is not really wanted, i want to do this in the simpliest fashion and not bother with MD5 The goal is, make it as fast as possible with as little effort as possible, then wait for the dad to give me something really good..:-) Cheers, -Ryan > Ryan, > > As usual, telling us more about the project will help. I'm a little > confused about the key -- is it just a unique key, or is it some form > of password, or somewhere in between? > > Let's look at the flow... > > 1. You send your pal a key in an email or whatever like so: > http://www.site.com/view.php?key=123457890 > > 2. they go to that URL, and view the message > > > What I don't understand is why the key needs to be so complicated. > Surely starting at 1 and incrementing is enough? MySQL's in-built > auto-increment makes life very easy to have a numbered unique key :) > > Or perhaps you want something less predictable... like PHP's unique key > function: > http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.uniqid.php > > > Before you even bother figuring out the queries, take a step back, and > think long and hard about what you're trying to achieve. You sound > like you're trying to invent something secure, but in reality, it's a > mess, with predictable, plain-text keys. > > > If I wanted to publish a list of secret messages on a website, each > message would have a unique ID (starting at one, and incrementing), a > password (*at least* stored as an md5(), and not transmitted with the > id), and finally the message field. > > Even then, I still don't get it, so perhaps you need to tell us more. > > > Justin French > > > On Tuesday, December 16, 2003, at 05:43 AM, Ryan A wrote: > > > Hi, > > I am making a personal project like so: > > > > I enter something in the text box (eg. "PHP REALLLLLLY ROCKS!!!") > > then the program checks if that string already exists in the database, > > if > > no, then it should enter it into the database and also generate a "key" > > This key can be given to pals and they can read the "secret message" > > > > Key: > > Key should first be 1-1000 then a-z then A-Z then axxx (eg: a001, the > > xxx > > will always be numbers) once it reaches 999 it should become Axxx then > > b > > then B etc after a,A,b,B are done it should go for aaxx,AAxx etc > > always 4 > > characters > > > > A few questions: > > 1.Looking at the above (database part) I figured that doing this via a > > mysql > > database would be better rather than a text database...do you agree? > > > > 2.I was thinking of making the "key" field a primary key and unique and > > indexed....right? > > > > 3.The way I see it theres 3 sql statements that need to be run, a) > > connect > > and see if string exists b)read the last key c)write to the > > database...anyway to break the above to 2 statements or am I following > > this > > wrong? > > > > 4. Logic for the key, I am coming up with crummy logic to make the > > "key", > > basically a block of code for 1-1000,another block for a-z another > > block for > > A-Z etc...... any ideas,links,URLs or code snippets off the top of > > your head > > would be greatly appreciated. > > > > > > Thanks in advance. > > > > Cheers, > > -Ryan > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
