Converting an integer to a 3 character String (base62)

Question

I wrote a code to convert an Integer between 1 and 238328 to a unique String, formed from base62 characters (A-Za-z0-9) and of length 3. The String generated can be reconverted to get back the initial Integer.

For example, if the number was 238328 I can convert it to "zzz". I want to be able to use that String "zzz" and get back the number 238328. I have written 2 methods to perform these operations and based on my testing it is working fine.

I am looking for some inputs on making it more readable and possibly more efficient. The conversion consists of 3 nested loops which really does not look right, though I can't get my head around a better way to do this.

class Permutation {

    private final String[] DICTIONARY = new String[]{
            "0","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9",
            "A","B","C","D","E","F","G","H","I","J","K","L","M","N","O","P","Q","R","S","T","U","V","W","X","Y","Z",
            "a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k","l","m","n","o","p","q","r","s","t","u","v","w","x","y","z"};

    private Map<String, Integer> codes = new HashMap<>();
    private Map<Integer, String> numbers = new HashMap<>();

    String generateCode(int num){

        int maxNumber = 238328;
        if(num > maxNumber || num < 1) return null;

        if(numbers.containsKey(num)){
            return numbers.get(num);
        }

        int counter = 0;

        for (int i = 0; i < DICTIONARY.length; i++) {
            for (int j = 0; j < DICTIONARY.length; j++) {
                for (int k = 0; k < DICTIONARY.length; k++) {
                    String code = DICTIONARY[i] + DICTIONARY[j] + DICTIONARY[k];
                    counter++;
                    numbers.put(counter, code);
                    codes.put(code, counter);
                    if(counter == num) return code;
                }
            }
        }

        return null;
    }

    int decode(String code){
        if(codes.containsKey(code)){
            return codes.get(code);
        }

        return 0;
    }
}

Answer 1

Your problem definition is .... odd. your code, will, for the input value 1 generate the output 000. Is that what you really want? Why do you need to 1-index the value set instead of 0-index it?

Further, your code caches all values up-to-and-including the input value in a HashMap. This can become quite large.... for the full dataset you're looking at about a quarter-million values where each is about 128 bytes of memory (a String, an Integer, and a Map.Entry plus some other overheads), or about 70 megabytes of data.

Your DICTIONARY should be an array of chars, not an array of String.

The maxNumber should be a static constant too.

Finally, you return a null value for an invalid input. That's very unconventional, you should throw an IllegalArgumentException instead.

As mentioned in a comment, you can "easily" solve your problem with a few "simple" operations.

private static final char[] DIGITS = ("0123456789"
       + "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
       + "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz").toCharArray();
private static final int BASE = DIGITS.length;
private static final int MAX_NUMBER = BASE * BASE * BASE;

public static String generateCode(int num) {
    if (num < 1 || num > MAX_NUMBER) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Illegal input value: " + num);
    }

    int value = num - 1;

    char ac = DIGITS[((value / BASE) / BASE) % BASE];
    char bc = DIGITS[(value / BASE) % BASE];
    char cc = DIGITS[value % BASE];
    return new String(new char[]{ac, bc, cc});
}

Note that I compute each digit separately (in to ac, bc, and cc) and then return the combination as a string.

Further, when running the code, I discovered that you are off on your zzz assertion .... the max value you propose for zzz is wrong, what you have is yyy. - I discovered I had a text transpose of zy instead of yz in my constant.

See the code running on ideone: https://ideone.com/EZqXlJ

For the inputs supplied in the tests I get the values:

Value 0 Error Illegal input value: 0
Value 1: 000
Value 2: 001
Value 62: 00z
Value 63: 010
Value 1000: 0G7
Value 238328: zzz
Value 238329 Error Illegal input value: 238329