Public IDs

Scope

public_ids controls the ID format exposed through APIs, URLs, and client-visible responses.

SyncTV can keep numeric IDs internally while exposing sqids to clients. This makes public IDs shorter, more uniform, and less obviously incremental.

public_ids:
  sqids:
    alphabet: "23456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz"
    min_length: 12

If public_ids.sqids is not configured, SyncTV uses the built-in prefixed decimal format.

Type: object or null.

Default: null.

Purpose: enables sqids encoding for public IDs.

Enable it when:

The service is public-facing and IDs should not look like simple incremental numbers.
Room, media, and user identifiers should have more uniform length.
Public identifiers should be easier to copy, display, and search in logs.

Keep the default when:

Type: optional string.

Default: empty, which means the sqids crate default alphabet is used.

Purpose: controls the characters available to sqids.

Example:

public_ids:
  sqids:
    alphabet: "23456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz"

This example removes visually ambiguous characters such as 0, O, I, and l.

Notes:

The alphabet must contain enough unique characters.
Changing the alphabet changes the public ID generated for the same internal ID.
For a new project, choose the product format early. After launch, changing it can break historical URLs, bookmarks, and external references.

Type: integer.

Default: 12.

Purpose: controls the minimum generated public ID length.

Example:

public_ids:
  sqids:
    min_length: 10

Recommended values:

Scenario	Recommendation
Internal or small deployment	`8` to `10`
Public product	`10` to `14`
Copy-friendly IDs	Avoid excessive length

Longer does not mean safer. Public IDs are not authorization. Access control must still be enforced by authentication and authorization logic.

Environment variable	Configuration field
`SYNCTV_PUBLIC_IDS_SQIDS_ALPHABET`	`public_ids.sqids.alphabet`
`SYNCTV_PUBLIC_IDS_SQIDS_MIN_LENGTH`	`public_ids.sqids.min_length`