Question

How to calculate the MD5 in Objective-C?

Answer 1

md5 is available on the iPhone and can be added as an addition for ie NSString and NSData like below.

MyAdditions.h

@interface NSString (MyAdditions)
- (NSString *)md5;
@end

@interface NSData (MyAdditions)
- (NSString*)md5;
@end

MyAdditions.m

#import "MyAdditions.h"
#import <CommonCrypto/CommonDigest.h> // Need to import for CC_MD5 access

@implementation NSString (MyAdditions)
- (NSString *)md5
{
    const char *cStr = [self UTF8String];
    unsigned char result[CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH];
    CC_MD5( cStr, (int)strlen(cStr), result ); // This is the md5 call
    return [NSString stringWithFormat:
        @"%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x",
        result[0], result[1], result[2], result[3], 
        result[4], result[5], result[6], result[7],
        result[8], result[9], result[10], result[11],
        result[12], result[13], result[14], result[15]
        ];  
}
@end

@implementation NSData (MyAdditions)
- (NSString*)md5
{
    unsigned char result[CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH];
    CC_MD5( self.bytes, (int)self.length, result ); // This is the md5 call
    return [NSString stringWithFormat:
        @"%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x",
        result[0], result[1], result[2], result[3], 
        result[4], result[5], result[6], result[7],
        result[8], result[9], result[10], result[11],
        result[12], result[13], result[14], result[15]
        ];  
}
@end

EDIT

Added NSData md5 because I needed it myself and thought this is a good place to save this little snippet…

These methods are verified using the NIST MD5 test vectors in
http://www.nsrl.nist.gov/testdata/