Generate a Hash from string in Javascript

Question

I need to convert strings to some form of hash. Is this possible in JavaScript?

I\'m not utilizing a server-side language so I can\'t do it that way.

Answer 1

This generates a consistent hash based on any number of params passed in:

/**
 * Generates a hash from params passed in
 * @returns {string} hash based on params
 */
function fastHashParams() {
    var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments).join('|');
    var hash = 0;
    if (args.length == 0) {
        return hash;
    }
    for (var i = 0; i < args.length; i++) {
        var char = args.charCodeAt(i);
        hash = ((hash << 5) - hash) + char;
        hash = hash & hash; // Convert to 32bit integer
    }
    return String(hash);
}

fastHashParams('hello world') outputs "990433808"

fastHashParams('this',1,'has','lots','of','params',true) outputs "1465480334"