Horton

Re: Add uuid_to_base32hex() and base32hex_to_uuid() built-in functions

Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>

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From: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
To: Andrey Borodin <x4mmm@yandex-team.ru>
Cc: Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander@tigerdata.com>, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>, Sergey Prokhorenko <sergeyprokhorenko@yahoo.com.au>
Date: 2025-10-23T14:10:04Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. Add base32hex support to encode() and decode() functions.

  2. Allow explicit casting between bytea and uuid.

  3. Add support for base64url encoding and decoding

On Thu, 23 Oct 2025 at 15:07, Andrey Borodin <x4mmm@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
> > SELECT encode(uuidv7() :: bytea, 'base32');
>
> That's an excellent feedback! Would such conversion be idiomatic for Postgres users?
> Are there any other alternative approaches?

Agreed that extending the encode function is the way to go. An example
of that is the recently added support for base64url:
https://git.postgresql.org/cgit/postgresql.git/commit/?h=REL_18_0&id=e1d917182c1953b16b32a39ed2fe38e3d0823047

> > The value of converting uuid to base32 is not obvious though, so I
> > would recommend explaining it in more detail.
>
> Yes, and maybe some examples of other systems that adopted this format would be handy too. Sergey, can you, please, extend reasoning why this particular format is prominent? RFC 4648 describes a bunch of formats.

I've definitely used base32 to encode uuids myself. The primary
benefit being shorter strings, while still being able to spell them
out by voice to people without having to specify whether a letter is
upper or lowercase.