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

If it helps anyone, I combined the top two answers into an older-browser-tolerant version, which uses the fast version if reduce is available and falls back to esmiralha's solution if it's not.

/**
 * @see http://stackoverflow.com/q/7616461/940217
 * @return {number}
 */
String.prototype.hashCode = function(){
    if (Array.prototype.reduce){
        return this.split("").reduce(function(a,b){a=((a<<5)-a)+b.charCodeAt(0);return a&a},0);              
    } 
    var hash = 0;
    if (this.length === 0) return hash;
    for (var i = 0; i < this.length; i++) {
        var character  = this.charCodeAt(i);
        hash  = ((hash<<5)-hash)+character;
        hash = hash & hash; // Convert to 32bit integer
    }
    return hash;
}

Usage is like:

var hash = "some string to be hashed".hashCode();

Answer 2

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"

Answer 3

I do not see any reason to use this overcomplicated crypto code instead of ready-to-use solutions, like object-hash library, or etc. relying on vendor is more productive, saves time and reduces maintenance cost.

Just use https://github.com/puleos/object-hash

var hash = require('object-hash');

hash({foo: 'bar'}) // => '67b69634f9880a282c14a0f0cb7ba20cf5d677e9'
hash([1, 2, 2.718, 3.14159]) // => '136b9b88375971dff9f1af09d7356e3e04281951'

Answer 4

Based on accepted answer in ES6. Smaller, maintainable and works in modern browsers.

function hashCode(str) {
  return str.split('').reduce((prevHash, currVal) =>
    (((prevHash << 5) - prevHash) + currVal.charCodeAt(0))|0, 0);
}

// Test
console.log("hashCode(\"Hello!\"): ", hashCode('Hello!'));

EDIT (2019-11-04):

one-liner arrow function version :

const hashCode = s => s.split('').reduce((a,b) => (((a << 5) - a) + b.charCodeAt(0))|0, 0)

// test
console.log(hashCode('Hello!'))

Answer 5

A fast and concise one which was adapted from here:

String.prototype.hashCode = function() {
  var hash = 5381, i = this.length
  while(i)
    hash = (hash * 33) ^ this.charCodeAt(--i)
  return hash >>> 0;
}

Answer 6

Adding this because nobody did yet, and this seems to be asked for and implemented a lot with hashes, but it's always done very poorly...

This takes a string input, and a maximum number you want the hash to equal, and produces a unique number based on the string input.

You can use this to produce a unique index into an array of images (If you want to return a specific avatar for a user, chosen at random, but also chosen based on their name, so it will always be assigned to someone with that name).

You can also use this, of course, to return an index into an array of colors, like for generating unique avatar background colors based on someone's name.

function hashInt (str, max = 1000) {
    var hash = 0;
    for (var i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
      hash = ((hash << 5) - hash) + str.charCodeAt(i);
      hash = hash & hash;
    }
    return Math.round(max * Math.abs(hash) / 2147483648);
}