How to produce a unique string from a php array

Question

I need a unique string from an array so that I can tell when it changes without measuring the inputs of that array. I'm trying to work out if it is computationally efficient to calculate a value rather than add code to look out for changes in the array. The array itself can have a variety of values and for future proofing I don't want to try and measure whether new values have been added to the array, I'd much rather just create some string or hash that will change if the array itself changes.

So for example:

$a = Array(
'var1' => 1,
'var2' => 2,
'var3' => 3,
);

If I was to use md5(http_build_query($a)) perhaps with an added ksort to confirm that the order of the keys haven't changed this might then produce a unique string that I can use to compare against another run of the application to evaluate whether the array has changed.

I'm looking for an alternate, possibly faster or more elegant solutions to this.

Answer 1

Im use md5(serialize($array)) for this. Its better, because works for multi-dimensional arrays.

Answer 2

PHP has an array_diff() function, don't know if it's of any use for you.

Otherwise, you can eventualy use the incremental hashing possibility offered by php : http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.hash-init.php by iterating over each values of the array and adding them in the incremental hash.

Answer 3

Thanks for all the ideas guys.

I've tried all of them except a sha-256 which my server doesn't have installed.

Here's the results:

Average (http_build_query): 1.3954045954045E-5
Average (diff): 0.00011533766233766
Average (serialize): 1.7588411588412E-5
Average (md5): 1.6036963036966E-5
Average (implode-haval160,4): 1.5349650349649E-5

That's running the operation 1000 times and averaging the result. After refreshing a couple times I could tell that the http_build_query was the quickest. I guess my next question would be if anyone can think of any pitfalls of using this method?

Thanks

Here's my code:

class a {

    static $input;

    function test() {
        $start = null;
        $s = $e = $d = $g = $h = $i = $k = array();
        self::$input = array();

        for ($x = 0; $x <= 30; $x++) {
            self::$input['variable_' . $x] = rand();
        }

        for ($x = 0; $x <= 1000; $x++) {
            $start = microtime();

            $c = http_build_query(self::$input);
            ($c == $c);

            $s[] = microtime() - $start;
        }

        for ($x = 0; $x <= 1000; $x++) {
            $start = microtime();

            $c = md5(http_build_query(self::$input));
            ($c == $c);

            $e[] = microtime() - $start;
        }

        for ($x = 0; $x <= 1000; $x++) {
            $start = microtime();

            $c = array_diff(self::$input, self::$input);

            $d[] = microtime() - $start;
        }
        for ($x = 0; $x <= 1000; $x++) {
            $start = microtime();

            $c = serialize(self::$input);
            ($c == $c);

            $g[] = microtime() - $start;
        }

        for ($x = 0; $x <= 1000; $x++) {
            $start = microtime();

            $c =  hash("haval160,4", implode(',',self::$input));
            ($c == $c);

            $h[] = microtime() - $start;
        }
        echo "<pre>";

//print_r($s);
        echo "Average (http_build_query): " . array_sum($s) / count($s) . "<br>";
        echo "Average (diff): " . array_sum($d) / count($d) . "<br>";
        echo "Average (serialize): " . array_sum($g) / count($g) . "<br>";
        echo "Average (md5): " . array_sum($e) / count($e). "<br>";
        echo "Average (implode-haval160,4): " . array_sum($h) / count($h);
    }

}

a::test();

Answer 4

You could always just do

$str = implode(",", $a);
$check = hash("sha-256", $str);

Theoretically, that should detect changes in array size, data, or ordering.

Of course, you can use whatever hash you wish.