How do i calculate a MD5 hash from a string
It is a common practice to store passwords in databases using a hash. MD5 (defined in RFC 1321) is a common hash algorithm, and using it from C# is easy.
Here’s an implementation of a method that converts a string to an MD5 hash, which is a 32-character string of hexadecimal numbers.
public string CalculateMD5Hash(string input)
{
// step 1, calculate MD5 hash from input
MD5 md5 = System.Security.Cryptography.MD5.Create();
byte[] inputBytes = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(input);
byte[] hash = md5.ComputeHash(inputBytes);
// step 2, convert byte array to hex string
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < hash.Length; i++)
{
sb.Append(hash[i].ToString(”X2″));
}
return sb.ToString();
}
An example call:
string hash = CalculateMD5Hash(”abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz”);…returns a string like this:
C3FCD3D76192E4007DFB496CCA67E13B
To make the hex string use lower-case letters instead of upper-case, replace the single line inside the for loop with this line:
sb.Append(hash[i].ToString(”x2″));
The difference is the ToString method parameter.
