MD5 algorithm in Objective-C

If performance is important, you can use this optimized version. It is about 5 times faster than the ones with stringWithFormat or NSMutableString.

This is a category of NSString.

- (NSString *)md5
{
    const char* cStr = [self UTF8String];
    unsigned char result[CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH];
    CC_MD5(cStr, strlen(cStr), result);

    static const char HexEncodeChars[] = { '0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f' };
    char *resultData = malloc(CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH * 2 + 1);

    for (uint index = 0; index < CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH; index++) {
        resultData[index * 2] = HexEncodeChars[(result[index] >> 4)];
        resultData[index * 2 + 1] = HexEncodeChars[(result[index] % 0x10)];
    }
    resultData[CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH * 2] = 0;

    NSString *resultString = [NSString stringWithCString:resultData encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
    free(resultData);

    return resultString;
}

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/

You can use the built-in Common Crypto library to do so. Remember to import:

#import <CommonCrypto/CommonDigest.h>

and then:

- (NSString *) md5:(NSString *) input
{
    const char *cStr = [input UTF8String];
    unsigned char digest[CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH];
    CC_MD5( cStr, strlen(cStr), digest ); // This is the md5 call

    NSMutableString *output = [NSMutableString stringWithCapacity:CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH * 2];

    for(int i = 0; i < CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH; i++)
    [output appendFormat:@"%02x", digest[i]];

    return  output;
}