Best URL Shortening Algorithm [closed]

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I was wondering what is the best algorithm for URL shortening. I noticed most people do the following:

1) Get Unique auto generated id from database. 2) Encode unique auto generated id to Base 64 value.开发者_运维百科

Its kind of obvious to a user what previous url's might be. What can I do to make it harder for the user to figure out what algorithm I'm using?

Thank you, Tesh

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Generate an id at random and check to see if it has been used already?

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May be you can use a SHA to hash it

EDIT: Better generate a random number and hash it as Jon pointed out

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First of all, it's not a good idea to put authentication information (e.g. usernames and passwords) in URLs (users would reveal their passwords simply by copy/pasting links, etc.).

That said, if you want to obscure the order that URLs were added to the shortening service, you could use the output of a cryptographic hash function such as MD5 or SHA1 (which is considered "irreversible", i.e. infeasible to derive the input from the output), base-64 encode that, and take eight characters, for example. The input to the hash function could be the URL (possibly the current time as well).