About

Convert numbers into easy-to-pronounce phrases with the following characteristics:

• A phrase consists of one more more words separated by dashes.
• Each word consists of up to six letters. (Only the last word can consist of seven letters.)
• Each word is formed of CONSONANT-VOWEL-CONSONANT trigrams.
• Consonants are: [bcdfghklmnpqrstvwxyz] (note the absence of j).
• Vowels are [aeiou].

Thus, every trigram stores 2000 possible combinations.

Installation

npm install dahnencode

Usage

Encode

import { encode, decode } from 'dahnencode'

console.log( encode(1234567890) )
// 'fam-rufyup'

console.log( encode(new Date('2022-02-01T12:00:00.000Z')) )
// 'dahnen-gabbab'

Decode

console.log( decode('dahnen-wowsom') )
// 1643719353368

cosole.log( decode('hellow-worlod') )
// 4219107344762

console.log( new Date(decode('mother-fucker')) )
// Sat Aug 20 2191 16:32:42 GMT+0300 (Moscow Standard Time)
// (Mark the date!)

Try it out

https://ideality-stage.herokuapp.com/test/dahnencode

Why the fuck?

When building/testing, you can now generate IDs that you can actually pronounce. You can also find out which IDs were generated when, either roughly (“Oh, it’s dahne, I remember it was somewhere last month”) or precisely (using decode).

Specifically, using encode(new Date()) will give an ID that is specific to the current millisecond. Combined with e.g. lodash’s _.uniqueId, it can be used to generate unique and readable IDs for your app.

What does “dahnen” mean?

According to Wikipedia, Dahnen is a municipality in the district of Bitburg-Prüm, in Rhineland-Palatinate, western Germany. However, in this case, the name was chosen just because it was the first word encoded at the time of creation (see second example above).

If you read this far...

Fun fact, if you encode an id based on the current timestamp, every:

• Last trigram is rotated every 2000 milliseconds, or 2 seconds.
• Last word is rotated every 2000*2000=4e6 ms, or ~1 hour
• Last trigram of the first word is rotated every 200020002000=8e9 ms, or ~90 days
• The whole phrase is rotated every 200020002000*2000=16e12 ms, or ~500 years

So you are likely to not see a 13-letter word unless you are REALLY patient.