How can I generate an MD5 hash?

Question

Is there any method to generate MD5 hash of a string in Java?

Answer 1

The MessageDigest class can provide you with an instance of the MD5 digest.

When working with strings and the crypto classes be sure to always specify the encoding you want the byte representation in. If you just use string.getBytes() it will use the platform default. (Not all platforms use the same defaults)

import java.security.*;

..

byte[] bytesOfMessage = yourString.getBytes("UTF-8");

MessageDigest md = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
byte[] thedigest = md.digest(bytesOfMessage);

If you have a lot of data take a look at the .update(byte[]) method which can be called repeatedly. Then call .digest() to obtain the resulting hash.

Answer 2

Another option is to use the Guava Hashing methods:

Hasher hasher = Hashing.md5().newHasher();
hasher.putString("my string");
byte[] md5 = hasher.hash().asBytes();

Handy if you are already using Guava (which if you're not, you probably should be).

Answer 3

I have a Class (Hash) to convert plain text in hash in formats: md5 or sha1, simillar that php functions (md5, sha1):

public class Hash {
    /**
     * 
     * @param txt, text in plain format
     * @param hashType MD5 OR SHA1
     * @return hash in hashType 
     */
    public static String getHash(String txt, String hashType) {
        try {
                    java.security.MessageDigest md = java.security.MessageDigest.getInstance(hashType);
                    byte[] array = md.digest(txt.getBytes());
                    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
                    for (int i = 0; i < array.length; ++i) {
                        sb.append(Integer.toHexString((array[i] & 0xFF) | 0x100).substring(1,3));
                 }
                    return sb.toString();
            } catch (java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
                //error action
            }
            return null;
    }

    public static String md5(String txt) {
        return Hash.getHash(txt, "MD5");
    }

    public static String sha1(String txt) {
        return Hash.getHash(txt, "SHA1");
    }
}

Testing with JUnit and PHP

PHP Script:

<?php

echo 'MD5 :' . md5('Hello World') . "\n";
echo 'SHA1:' . sha1('Hello World') . "\n";

Output PHP script:

MD5 :b10a8db164e0754105b7a99be72e3fe5
SHA1:0a4d55a8d778e5022fab701977c5d840bbc486d0

Using example and Testing with JUnit:

    public class HashTest {

    @Test
    public void test() {
        String txt = "Hello World";
        assertEquals("b10a8db164e0754105b7a99be72e3fe5", Hash.md5(txt));
        assertEquals("0a4d55a8d778e5022fab701977c5d840bbc486d0", Hash.sha1(txt));
    }

}

Code in GitHub

https://github.com/fitorec/java-hashes

Answer 4

For what it's worth, I stumbled upon this because I want to synthesize GUIDs from a natural key for a program that will install COM components; I want to syhthesize so as not to manage GUID lifecycle. I'll use MD5 and then use the UUID class to get a string out of it. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2190890/how-can-i-generate-guid-for-a-string-values/12867439 raises this issue).

In any case, java.util.UUID can get you a nice String from the MD5 bytes.

return UUID.nameUUIDFromBytes(md5Bytes).toString();

Answer 5

My not very revealing answer:

private String md5(String s) {
    try {
        MessageDigest m = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
        m.update(s.getBytes(), 0, s.length());
        BigInteger i = new BigInteger(1,m.digest());
        return String.format("%1$032x", i);         
    } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return null;
}

Answer 6

I do not know if this is relevant for anyone reading this, but I just had the problem that I wanted to

• download a file from a given URL and
• compare its MD5 to a known value.

I wanted to do it with JRE classes only (no Apache Commons or similar). A quick web search did not show me sample code snippets doing both at the same time, only each task separately. Because this requires to read the same file twice, I figured it might be worth the while to write some code which unifies both tasks, calculating the checksum on the fly while downloading the file. This is my result (sorry if it is not perfect Java, but I guess you get the idea anyway):

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.math.BigInteger;
import java.net.URL;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.nio.channels.Channels;
import java.nio.channels.ReadableByteChannel;
import java.nio.channels.WritableByteChannel;
import java.security.DigestOutputStream;        // new
import java.security.MessageDigest;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;

void downloadFile(String fromURL, String toFile, BigInteger md5)
    throws IOException, NoSuchAlgorithmException
{
    ReadableByteChannel in = Channels.newChannel(new URL(fromURL).openStream());
    MessageDigest md5Digest = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
    WritableByteChannel out = Channels.newChannel(
        //new FileOutputStream(toFile));  // old
        new DigestOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(toFile), md5Digest));  // new
    ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(1024 * 1024);  // 1 MB

    while (in.read(buffer) != -1) {
        buffer.flip();
        //md5Digest.update(buffer.asReadOnlyBuffer());  // old
        out.write(buffer);
        buffer.clear();
    }

    BigInteger md5Actual = new BigInteger(1, md5Digest.digest()); 
    if (! md5Actual.equals(md5))
        throw new RuntimeException(
            "MD5 mismatch for file " + toFile +
            ": expected " + md5.toString(16) +
            ", got " + md5Actual.toString(16)
        );
}