This library implements base62 encoding. In addition to integers it can encode and decode any arbitrary data. This is useful for example when generating url safe random tokens for database identifiers.

Install with composer.

$ composer require tuupola/base62

This branch requires PHP 7.1 or up. The older 1.x branch supports also PHP 5.6 and 7.0.

$ composer require "tuupola/base62:^1.0"

This package has both pure PHP and GMP based encoders. By default encoder and decoder will use GMP functions if the extension is installed. If GMP is not available pure PHP encoder will be used instead.

$base62 = new Tuupola\Base62;

$encoded = $base62->encode(random_bytes(128));
$decoded = $base62->decode($encoded);

If you are encoding to and from integer use the implicit decodeInteger() and encodeInteger() methods.

$integer = $base62->encodeInteger(987654321); /* 14q60P */
print $base62->decodeInteger("14q60P"); /* 987654321 */

Note that encoding a string and an integer will yield different results.

$string = $base62->encode("987654321"); /* KHc6iHtXW3iD */
$integer = $base62->encodeInteger(987654321); /* 14q60P */

By default Base62 uses GMP style character set. Shortcut is provided for the inverted character set which is also commonly used. You can also use any custom character set of 62 unique characters.

use Tuupola\Base62;

print Base62::GMP; /* 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz */
print Base62::INVERTED; /* 0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ */

$default = new Base62(["characters" => Base62::GMP]);
$inverted = new Base62(["characters" => Base62::INVERTED]);
print $default->encode("Hello world!"); /* T8dgcjRGuYUueWht */
print $inverted->encode("Hello world!"); /* t8DGCJrgUyuUEwHT */

Install GMP if you can. It is much faster pure PHP encoder. Below benchmarks are for encoding random_bytes(128) data. BCMatch encoder is also included but it is mostly just a curiosity. It is too slow to be usable.

$ php --version
PHP 8.0.7 (cli) (built: Jun  4 2021 03:50:01) ( NTS )

$ make bench

+-----------------------+------------------+-----------+
| subject               | mean             | diff      |
+-----------------------+------------------+-----------+
| benchGmpDecoder       | 140,409.997ops/s | 1.10x     |
| benchGmpDecoderCustom | 154,607.297ops/s | 1.00x     |
| benchPhpDecoder       | 721.147ops/s     | 214.39x   |
| benchBcmathDecoder    | 72.191ops/s      | 2,141.64x |
+-----------------------+------------------+-----------+

+-----------------------+------------------+-----------+
| subject               | mean             | diff      |
+-----------------------+------------------+-----------+
| benchGmpEncoder       | 352,609.309ops/s | 1.00x     |
| benchGmpEncoderCustom | 350,140.056ops/s | 1.01x     |
| benchPhpEncoder       | 669.959ops/s     | 526.31x   |
| benchBcmathEncoder    | 72.956ops/s      | 4,833.21x |
+-----------------------+------------------+-----------+

If you prefer to use static syntax use the provided static proxy.

use Tuupola\Base62Proxy as Base62;

$encoded = Base62::encode(random_bytes(128));
$decoded = Base62::decode(