How to create a unique ID in PHP from a long string of user info
<p>I am reading some data from a user's badge via a magnetic swipe.  It brings back a long unique text string that includes the user's badge number, their name, and a few other pieces of information.  I want to be able to pull up the user's information through their swipe.  I was thinking of making an MD5 hash out of the user's data, but i'm not sure how unique the MD5 would be from that swipe so I can store that md5 as how I look up the user in my MySQL database?</p>

<p><em>*</em> Update: Sorry, I should add that the badge might not necessarily be from us.  It might be from another company, so I really just need to take what is on the badge and create a unique ID from that. </p>
