Software engineer. Currently working with TypeScript, Ruby and Terraform to build digital solutions! Enthusiast about Elixir, OTP, design patterns and best practices.
Thanks! And you are totally right! It would just fail and user will be greeted with an error message. If that happens, it is like winning in a lottery 10 times in a row. If you calculate how many permutations 8-char/digit string can have with upper- and lowercase letters, symbols, numbers etc. The number of total permutations would be enormous.
I think the current solution is viable option how to do things for this exact case. In the create function we could check if the custom id exists already in DB, but it will slow down the creation of the new shortened url.
I think checking is not necessary; you can just proceed with the insert, and, if any unique violation occurs, generate a new key and try inserting again, repeat until it works. That way you make sure it works while not incurring in any penalty on the "happy" path.
Software engineer. Currently working with TypeScript, Ruby and Terraform to build digital solutions! Enthusiast about Elixir, OTP, design patterns and best practices.
Thanks! And you are totally right! It would just fail and user will be greeted with an error message. If that happens, it is like winning in a lottery 10 times in a row. If you calculate how many permutations 8-char/digit string can have with upper- and lowercase letters, symbols, numbers etc. The number of total permutations would be enormous.
I think the current solution is viable option how to do things for this exact case. In the create function we could check if the custom id exists already in DB, but it will slow down the creation of the new shortened url.
Good point anyway! :)
I think checking is not necessary; you can just proceed with the insert, and, if any unique violation occurs, generate a new key and try inserting again, repeat until it works. That way you make sure it works while not incurring in any penalty on the "happy" path.
Yes! That would be even better! I’ll update the article at some point to handle it like this. 👍