pf » SHA or MD5 Digests in ColdFusion

If you need to create a message digest, you can use Java's MessageDigest class. Here's an example:

<cfset digest = CreateObject("java", "java.security.MessageDigest")>
<cfset digest = digest.getInstance("SHA")>

<cfset result = digest.digest(str.getBytes())>
<cfset resultStr = ToBase64(result)>

<cfoutput>#resultStr#</cfoutput>

There are several different digest algorithms that you can use: MD2, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512. To use a different algorithm, put it in the getInstance() method on the second line.

Note that the Hash function in ColdFusion can be used to create a MD5 digest of a string, it returns the result as a 32 byte hex string. The example above returns the string using Base64 encoding. You can also use this method for checking or generating MD5's on files with ColdFusion.