How can I generate an MD5 hash?

Question

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

Answer 1

Bombe's answer is correct, however note that unless you absolutely must use MD5 (e.g. forced on you for interoperability), a better choice is SHA1 as MD5 has weaknesses for long term use.

I should add that SHA1 also has theoretical vulnerabilities, but not as severe. The current state of the art in hashing is that there are a number of candidate replacement hash functions but none have yet emerged as the standard best practice to replace SHA1. So, depending on your needs you would be well advised to make your hash algorithm configurable so it can be replaced in future.

Answer 2

MD5 is perfectly fine if you don't need the best security, and if you're doing something like checking file integrity then security is not a consideration. In such as case you might want to consider something simpler and faster, such as Adler32, which is also supported by the Java libraries.

Answer 3

Here is how I use it:

final MessageDigest messageDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
messageDigest.reset();
messageDigest.update(string.getBytes(Charset.forName("UTF8")));
final byte[] resultByte = messageDigest.digest();
final String result = new String(Hex.encodeHex(resultByte));

where Hex is: org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Hex from the Apache Commons project.

Answer 4

This is what I came here for- a handy scala function that returns string of MD5 hash:

def md5(text: String) : String = java.security.MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5").digest(text.getBytes()).map(0xFF & _).map { "%02x".format(_) }.foldLeft(""){_ + _}

Answer 5

I've found this to be the most clear and concise way to do it:

MessageDigest md5 = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
md5.update(StandardCharsets.UTF_8.encode(string));
return String.format("%032x", new BigInteger(1, md5.digest()));

Answer 6

Take a look at the following link, the Example gets an MD5 Hash of a supplied image: MD5 Hash of an Image