Django snippets: Sign a string using SHA1, then shrink it using url-safe base65. I needed a way to create tamper-proof URLs and cookies by signing them, but didn’t want the overhead of a full 40 character SHA1 hash. After some experimentation, it turns out you can knock a 40 char hash down to 27 characters by encoding it using a custom base65 encoding which only uses URL-safe characters.
Recent articles
- Vibe engineering - 7th October 2025
- OpenAI DevDay 2025 live blog - 6th October 2025
- Embracing the parallel coding agent lifestyle - 5th October 2025