# Hash

Hashes are a one-directional encryption that is commonly used for validating files or one-way securing data such as passwords.

### Available hashes

Crypto currently supports a few hashes.

- MD5
- SHA1
- SHA2 (all variants)

MD5 and SHA1 are generally used for file validation or legacy (weak) passwords. They're performant and lightweight.

Every Hash type has a set of helpers that you can use.

## Hashing blobs of data

Every `Hash` has a static method called `hash` that can be used for hashing the entire contents of `Foundation.Data`, `ByteBuffer` or `String`.

The result is `Data` containing the resulting hash. The hash's length is according to spec and defined in the static variable `digestSize`.

```swift
// MD5 with `Data`
let fileData = Data()
let fileMD5 = MD5.hash(fileData)

// SHA1 with `ByteBuffer`
let fileBuffer: ByteBuffer = ...
let fileSHA1 = SHA1.hash(fileBuffer)

// SHA2 variants with String
let staticUnsafeToken: String = "rsadd14ndmasidfm12i4j"

let tokenHashSHA224 = SHA224.hash(staticUnsafeToken)
let tokenHashSHA256 = SHA256.hash(staticUnsafeToken)
let tokenHashSHA384 = SHA384.hash(staticUnsafeToken)
let tokenHashSHA512 = SHA512.hash(staticUnsafeToken)
```

## Incremental hashes (manual)

To incrementally process hashes you can create an instance of the Hash. This will set up a context.

All hash context initializers are empty:

```swift
// Create an MD5 context
let md5Context = MD5()
```

To process a single chunk of data, you can call the `update` function on a context using any `Sequence` of `UInt8`. That means `Array`, `Data` and `ByteBuffer` work alongside any other sequence of bytes.

```swift
md5Context.update(data)
```

The data data need not be a specific length. Any length works.

When you need the result, you can call `md5Context.finalize()`. This will finish calculating the hash by appending the standard `1` bit, padding and message bitlength.

You can optionally provide a last set of data to `finalize()`.

After calling `finalize()`, do not update the hash if you want correct results.

### Fetching the results

The context can then be accessed to extract the resulting Hash.

```swift
let hash: Data = md5Context.hash
```

## Streaming hashes (Async)

Sometimes you need to hash the contents of a Stream, for example, when processing a file transfer. In this case you can use `ByteStreamHasher`.

First, create a new generic `ByteStreamHasher<Hash>` where `Hash` is the hash you want to use. In this case, SHA512.

```swift
let streamHasher = ByteStreamHasher<SHA512>()
```

This stream works like any `inputStream` by consuming the incoming data and passing the buffers to the hash context.

For example, draining a TCP socket.

```swift
let socket: TCP.Socket = ...

socket.drain(into: streamHasher)
```

This will incrementally update the hash using the provided TCP socket's data.

When the hash has been completely accumulated, you can `complete` the hash.

```swift
let hash = streamHasher.complete() // Foundation `Data`
```

This will reset the hash's context to the default configuration, ready to start over.