humanhash
humanhash provides human-readable representations of digests.
Example
>>> import humanhash
>>> digest = '7528880a986c40e78c38115e640da2a1'
>>> humanhash.humanize(digest)
'three-georgia-xray-jig'
>>> humanhash.humanize(digest, words=6)
'high-mango-white-oregon-purple-charlie'
>>> humanhash.uuid()
('potato-oranges-william-friend', '9d2278759ae24698b1345525bd53358b')
Install
This module is available on PyPI as the humanhash3
package. You can install
it with pip
:
$ pip install humanhash3
Caveats
Don’t store the humanhash output, as its statistical uniqueness is only
around 1 in 4.3 billion. Its intended use is as a human-readable (and,
most importantly, memorable) representation of a longer digest,
unique enough for display in a user interface, where a user may need to
remember or verbally communicate the identity of a hash, without having
to remember a 40-character hexadecimal sequence. Nevertheless, you
should keep original digests around, then pass them through
humanize()
only as you’re displaying them.
How It Works
The procedure for generating a humanhash involves compressing the input to a fixed length (default: 4 bytes), then mapping each of these bytes to a word in a pre-defined wordlist (a default wordlist is supplied with the library). This algorithm is consistent, so the same input, given the same wordlist, will always give the same output. You can also use your own wordlist, and specify a different number of words for output.
Inspiration
- Chroma-Hash - A human-viewable representation of a hash (albeit not one that can be output on a terminal, or shouted down a hallway).
- The NATO Phonetic Alphabet - A great example of the trade-off between clarity of human communication and byte-wise efficiency of representation.