HashDigest

Generates MD5 digests of Hashes (and Arrays) indifferent to key type and ordering.

Useful for hashing rows in a 2-dimensional table.

Used by the remote_table gem.

Example

Indifferent to key type

HashDigest.hexdigest(:a => 1)  #=> '3872c9ae3f427af0be0ead09d07ae2cf'
HashDigest.hexdigest('a' => 1) #=> '3872c9ae3f427af0be0ead09d07ae2cf'

Indifferent to key order

HashDigest.hexdigest(:a => 1, 'b' => 2) == HashDigest.hexdigest('a' => 1, :b => 2) # true
HashDigest.hexdigest(:a => 1, 'b' => 2) == HashDigest.hexdigest(:b => 2, 'a' => 1) # true

Algorithm

Basically represent the hash as a URL querystring, ordered by key, and MD5 that.

  1. Stringify keys
  2. Create an array of strings like "url_encode(key)=url_encode(value)" by going through each key in alphabetical order
  3. Join the array together with "&"
  4. MD5 hexdigest the joined string

To digest an array, just pretend it's a hash with keys like 1, 2, 3, etc.

Potential issues

  • Uses MD5 (not cryptographically awesome)
  • Uses ActiveSupport's #to_query method to create a digestible string like "foo=bar&baz=bam" (slow)
  • Meant for flat hashes, e.g. { :a => 1, :b => 2 } and not { :x => { :y => :z } }

Copyright 2011 Seamus Abshere