title: Represent MD5 hash as an integer
body: <p>In my user database table, I take the MD5 hash of the email address of a user as the id.</p>
  
  <p>Example: <code>email(example@example.org) = id(d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e)</code></p>
  
  <p>Unfortunately, I have to represent the ids as integer values now - in order to be able to use an API where the id can only be an integer.</p>
  
  <p>Now I'm looking for a way to encode the id into an integer for sending an decode it again when receiving. How could I do this?</p>
  
  <p>My ideas so far:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><code>convert_uuencode()</code> and <code>convert_uudecode()</code> for the MD5 hash</li>
  <li>replace every character of the MD5 hash by its <code>ord()</code> value</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Which approach is better? Do you know even better ways to do this?</p>
  
  <p>I hope you can help me. Thank you very much in advance!</p>