Unique Key Generation Logic - php

Question

I am planning to build, for lack of a better term, a multi user Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) and I want to create a unique identifier that is easy to transmit in email, via text, and verbally to other team members.
For Example:
I upload my list of 100 customers and John Smith and his phone number are included in that list. Upon upload, I want to generate a hidden fingerprint / unique identifier for John Smith in the database, and then propagate a 12 digit number that can be shared publicly.
In my mind like this - john smith + ph: 5557898095 = fingerprint: 7e013d7962800374e6e67dd502f2d7c0 displays to end user id number: 103457843983
My question is - what method or process should I use to take the name and phone number, generate a hidden key, and then translate to a displayable key that is linked to the hidden one?
I hope this clear. I mainly want to use the right logic process.

Answer 1

You could use crc32('fingerprint') for the end user id number:
<?php
echo printf("%u", crc32('7e013d7962800374e6e67dd502f2d7c0')); //226407465310
?>

Answer 2

I don't understand what your problem really is, but I'll try.
It seems like you mean something like this:
A SQL table which saves the public and private ID (and maybe other things).
You can generate a key like this:
$chars = '0123456789abcedfghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
function generateKey($length, $charsLength = 10) {
global $chars;
$key = '';
for($i=0;$i<$length;++$i) {
$key .= $chars[rand(0, $charsLength - 1)];
}
return $key;
}
$keyPublic = generateKey(10); // Public key with length 10
// Now check if the key already exist
while(mysql_num_rows(mysql_select('SELECT publicKey FROM keys WHERE publicKey = \''.$keyPublic.'\')) === 1) {
$keyPublic = generateKey(10);
}
$keyPrivate = generateKey(10, 36); // Private key with length 10
// Now check if the key already exist
while(mysql_num_rows(mysql_select('SELECT privateKey FROM keys WHERE privateKey = \''.$keyPrivate.'\')) === 1) {
$keyPrivate = generateKey(10, 36);
}
In this example there are two keys generated and it is checked if the keys already exist. (in the example in the table "keys").

Answer 3

Assuming your real ID is the auto_incremented field in your customer table, then just have a second table that maps your public ID to the real ID.
Assuming you're using some sort of hashing algorithm to generate your public ID, it'd be a simple process to do a lookup on that table when you create a new user to detect a clash with an existing user, then regenerate a new ID until there's no clash (e.g. include system time as part of your hash input, then just keep regenerating until you find a unique ID)