Generating MD5 hashes on Node.js

You can create hashes in Node.js without the need to install any external library. Usually, I create the following utility function in the projects I work on:

/**
 * Hashes a string using md5
 *
 * @param {string} str
 * @returns {string}
 */
export const md5 = (str) => createHash('md5').update(str).digest('hex')

And I use it to replace the md5 library whenever I come across it.

Note that you can create hashes for any algorithm supported by the OpenSSL version on your platform. On Linux and Mac, you can see which algorithms are available with the command openssl list -digest-algorithms.

Comments

[Rishi Kumar]

Why use this instead of the md5 library (stable and well-tested)?

[Ivens Joris]

because this is the default library, would you install a external library for the console.log?
So why do it if the language default library have this (stable, well tested, not dependent of external, but of the language)