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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[] theMD5digest = md.digest(bytesOfMessage);
If you have a lot of data take a look at the .update(xxx) methods which can be called repeatedly. Then call .digest() to obtain the resulting hash.
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You need java.security.MessageDigest.
Call MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5") to get a MD5 instance of MessageDigest you can use.
The compute the hash by doing one of:
Feed the entire input as a byte[] and calculate the hash in one operation with md.digest(bytes).
Feed the MessageDigest one byte[] chunk at a time by calling md.update(bytes). When you're done adding input bytes, calculate the hash with
md.digest().
The byte[] returned by md.digest() is the MD5 hash.
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If you actually want the answer back as a string as opposed to a byte array, you could always do something like this:
String plaintext = "your text here";
MessageDigest m = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
m.reset();
m.update(plaintext.getBytes());
byte[] digest = m.digest();
BigInteger bigInt = new BigInteger(1,digest);
String hashtext = bigInt.toString(16);
// Now we need to zero pad it if you actually want the full 32 chars.
while(hashtext.length() < 32 ){
hashtext = "0"+hashtext;
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public String MD5(String md5) {
try {
java.security.MessageDigest md = java.security.MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
byte[] array = md.digest(md5.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) {
return null;
on the site below, I take no credit for it, but its a solution that works!
For me lots of other code didnt work properly, I ended up missing 0s in the hash.
This one seems to be the same as PHP has.
source: http://m2tec.be/blog/2010/02/03/java-md5-hex-0093
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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.
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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()));
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I just downloaded commons-codec.jar and got perfect php like md5. Here is manual.
Just import it to your project and use
String Url = "your_url";
System.out.println( DigestUtils.md5Hex( Url ) );
and there you have it.
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No need to make it too complicated.
DigestUtils works fine and makes you comfortable while working with md5 hashes.
DigestUtils.md5Hex(_hash);
DigestUtils.md5(_hash);
Either you can use any other encryption methods such as sha or md.
Found this solution which is much cleaner in terms of getting a String representation back from an MD5 hash.
import java.security.*;
import java.math.*;
public class MD5 {
public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception{
String s="This is a test";
MessageDigest m=MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
m.update(s.getBytes(),0,s.length());
System.out.println("MD5: "+new BigInteger(1,m.digest()).toString(16));
The code was extracted from here.
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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).
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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:
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
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;
There is a DigestUtils class in Spring also:
http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/javadoc-api/org/springframework/util/DigestUtils.html
This class contains the method md5DigestAsHex() that does the job.
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You can try following. See details and download codes here: http://jkssweetlife.com/java-hashgenerator-md5-sha-1/
import java.security.MessageDigest;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
public class MD5Example {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
final String inputString = "Hello MD5";
System.out.println("MD5 hex for '" + inputString + "' :");
System.out.println(getMD5Hex(inputString));
public static String getMD5Hex(final String inputString) throws NoSuchAlgorithmException {
MessageDigest md = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
md.update(inputString.getBytes());
byte[] digest = md.digest();
return convertByteToHex(digest);
private static String convertByteToHex(byte[] byteData) {
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < byteData.length; i++) {
sb.append(Integer.toString((byteData[i] & 0xff) + 0x100, 16).substring(1));
return sb.toString();
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.
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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)
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byte[] bytesOfMessage = yourString.getBytes("UTF-8");
MessageDigest md = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
byte[] bytesOfDigest = md.digest(bytesOfMessage);
String digest = DatatypeConverter.printHexBinary(bytesOfDigest).toLowerCase();
Unlike PHP where you can do an MD5 hashing of your text by just calling md5 function ie md5($text), in Java it was made little bit complicated. I usually implemented it by calling a function which returns the md5 hash text.
Here is how I implemented it, First create a function named md5hashing inside your main class as given below.
public static String md5hashing(String text)
{ String hashtext = null;
String plaintext = text;
MessageDigest m = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
m.reset();
m.update(plaintext.getBytes());
byte[] digest = m.digest();
BigInteger bigInt = new BigInteger(1,digest);
hashtext = bigInt.toString(16);
// Now we need to zero pad it if you actually want the full 32 chars.
while(hashtext.length() < 32 ){
hashtext = "0"+hashtext;
} catch (Exception e1)
// TODO: handle exception
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,e1.getClass().getName() + ": " + e1.getMessage());
return hashtext;
Now call the function whenever you needed as given below.
String text = textFieldName.getText();
String pass = md5hashing(text);
Here you can see that hashtext is appended with a zero to make it match with md5 hashing in PHP.
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();
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this one gives the exact md5 as you get from mysql's md5 function or php's md5 functions etc. This is the one I use (you can change according to your needs)
public static String md5( String input ) {
try {
java.security.MessageDigest md = java.security.MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
byte[] array = md.digest(input.getBytes( "UTF-8" ));
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
sb.append( String.format( "%02x", array[i]));
return sb.toString();
} catch ( NoSuchAlgorithmException | UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
return null;
//Quick MD5 of text
val text = "MD5 this text!"
val md5hash1 = digest.digest(text.getBytes).map("%02x".format(_)).mkString
//MD5 of text with updates
digest.update("MD5 ".getBytes())
digest.update("this ".getBytes())
digest.update("text!".getBytes())
val md5hash2 = digest.digest().map(0xFF & _).map("%02x".format(_)).mkString
//Output
println(md5hash1 + " should be the same as " + md5hash2)
You can generate MD5 hash for a given text by making use of the methods in the MessageDigest class in the java.security package. Below is the complete code snippet,
import java.security.MessageDigest;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
import javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter;
public class MD5HashGenerator
public static void main(String args[]) throws NoSuchAlgorithmException
String stringToHash = "MyJavaCode";
MessageDigest messageDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
messageDigest.update(stringToHash.getBytes());
byte[] digiest = messageDigest.digest();
String hashedOutput = DatatypeConverter.printHexBinary(digiest);
System.out.println(hashedOutput);
The output from the MD5 function is a 128 bit hash represented by 32 hexadecimal numbers.
In case, if you are using a database like MySQL, you can do this in a more simpler way as well. The query Select MD5(“text here”) will return the MD5 hash of the text in the bracket.
public static String getHashMD5(String string) {
try {
MessageDigest md = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
BigInteger bi = new BigInteger(1, md.digest(string.getBytes()));
return bi.toString(16);
} catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(MD5Utils.class
.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
return "";
import java.math.BigInteger;
import java.security.MessageDigest;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
* MD5 encryption
* @author Hongten
public class MD5 {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(MD5.getMD5("123456"));
* Use md5 encoded code value
* @param sInput
* clearly
* @ return md5 encrypted password
public static String getMD5(String sInput) {
String algorithm = "";
if (sInput == null) {
return "null";
try {
algorithm = System.getProperty("MD5.algorithm", "MD5");
} catch (SecurityException se) {
MessageDigest md = null;
try {
md = MessageDigest.getInstance(algorithm);
} catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
byte buffer[] = sInput.getBytes();
for (int count = 0; count < sInput.length(); count++) {
md.update(buffer, 0, count);
byte bDigest[] = md.digest();
BigInteger bi = new BigInteger(bDigest);
return (bi.toString(16));
There is an article on Codingkit about that. Check out: http://codingkit.com/a/JAVA/2013/1020/2216.html
