I have been experimenting with using UUIDs as database keys. I want to take up the least amount of bytes as possible, while still keeping the UUID representation human readable.
I think that I have gotten it down to 22 bytes using base64 and removing some trailing "==" that seem to be unnecessary to store for my purposes. Are there any flaws with this approach?
Basically my test code does a bunch of conversions to get the UUID down to a 22 byte String, then converts it back into a UUID.
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.UUID;
public class UUIDTest {
public static void main(String[] args){
UUID uuid = UUID.randomUUID();
System.out.println("UUID String: " + uuid.toString());
System.out.println("Number of Bytes: " + uuid.toString().getBytes().length);
System.out.println();
byte[] uuidArr = asByteArray(uuid);
System.out.print("UUID Byte Array: ");
for(byte b: uuidArr){
System.out.print(b +" ");
}
System.out.println();
System.out.println("Number of Bytes: " + uuidArr.length);
System.out.println();
try {
// Convert a byte array to base64 string
String s = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode(uuidArr);
System.out.println("UUID Base64 String: " +s);
System.out.println("Number of Bytes: " + s.getBytes().length);
System.out.println();
String trimmed = s.split("=")[0];
System.out.println("UUID Base64 String Trimmed: " +trimmed);
System.out.println("Number of Bytes: " + trimmed.getBytes().length);
System.out.println();
// Convert base64 string to a byte array
byte[] backArr = new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder().decodeBuffer(trimmed);
System.out.print("Back to UUID Byte Array: ");
for(byte b: backArr){
System.out.print(b +" ");
}
System.out.println();
System.out.println("Number of Bytes: " + backArr.length);
byte[] fixedArr = new byte[16];
for(int i= 0; i<16; i++){
fixedArr[i] = backArr[i];
}
System.out.println();
System.out.print("Fixed UUID Byte Array: ");
for(byte b: fixedArr){
System.out.print(b +" ");
}
System.out.println();
System.out.println("Number of Bytes: " + fixedArr.length);
System.out.println();
UUID newUUID = toUUID(fixedArr);
System.out.println("UUID String: " + newUUID.toString());
System.out.println("Number of Bytes: " + newUUID.toString().getBytes().length);
System.out.println();
System.out.println("Equal to Start UUID? "+newUUID.equals(uuid));
if(!newUUID.equals(uuid)){
System.exit(0);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
}
}
public static byte[] asByteArray(UUID uuid) {
long msb = uuid.getMostSignificantBits();
long lsb = uuid.getLeastSignificantBits();
byte[] buffer = new byte[16];
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
buffer[i] = (byte) (msb >>> 8 * (7 - i));
}
for (int i = 8; i < 16; i++) {
buffer[i] = (byte) (lsb >>> 8 * (7 - i));
}
return buffer;
}
public static UUID toUUID(byte[] byteArray) {
long msb = 0;
long lsb = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)
msb = (msb << 8) | (byteArray[i] & 0xff);
for (int i = 8; i < 16; i++)
lsb = (lsb << 8) | (byteArray[i] & 0xff);
UUID result = new UUID(msb, lsb);
return result;
}
}
output:
UUID String: cdaed56d-8712-414d-b346-01905d0026fe
Number of Bytes: 36
UUID Byte Array: -51 -82 -43 109 -121 18 65 77 -77 70 1 -112 93 0 38 -2
Number of Bytes: 16
UUID Base64 String: za7VbYcSQU2zRgGQXQAm/g==
Number of Bytes: 24
UUID Base64 String Trimmed: za7VbYcSQU2zRgGQXQAm/g
Number of Bytes: 22
Back to UUID Byte Array: -51 -82 -43 109 -121 18 65 77 -77 70 1 -112 93 0 38 -2 0 38
Number of Bytes: 18
Fixed UUID Byte Array: -51 -82 -43 109 -121 18 65 77 -77 70 1 -112 93 0 38 -2
Number of Bytes: 16
UUID String: cdaed56d-8712-414d-b346-01905d0026fe
Number of Bytes: 36
Equal to Start UUID? true