Question

I want to turn an MD5 Hash to a string:

public String MD5ToString(String plain) {
    try {
        MessageDigest md = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
        md.reset();
        md.update(plain.getBytes());
        byte[] digest = md.digest();
        BigInteger bigInt = new BigInteger(1,digest);
        String hashtext = bigInt.toString(16);
        // Now we need to zero pad it if you actually want the full 32 chars.
        while(hashtext.length() < 32 ){
            hashtext = "0"+hashtext;
        }
        return plain;
    } catch (Exception e) {
        System.out.println("Cannot encrypt String to Hash");
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return null;
}

However i just get the Md5 back? Whats ms mistake?

UPDATE:

I changed the return type to hashtext, BUT when I want to convert a hash to a string I just get another has back:

String: test
Hash: 098f6bcd4621d373cade4e832627b4f6
String: fb469d7ef430b0baf0cab6c436e70375

Answer 1

I didn’t analyze the code carefully but you return the object plain which has not changed. You should return hashText object if you want to get MD5 string returned from the method.