Calculate Hash using PHP

Many do not know, that with PHP, you can also calculate other hashes than MD5 and CRC32. For MD5 and CRC32 as well as for some other hash values, there are separate functions such as md5() and crc32(). For many other hashes, there is the function hash() which can be called like this:

$string = 'We are calculating the hash of this string.';
 
echo hash('md5', $string);
echo hash('adler32', $string);

The function knows the following paramaters to calculate the different hashes:

• adler32
• crc32, crc32b
• gost
• haval128,3, haval160,3, haval192,3, haval224,3, haval256,3
• haval128,4, haval160,4, haval192,4, haval224,4, haval256,4
• haval128,5, haval160,5, haval192,5, haval224,5, haval256,5
• md2, md4, md5
• ripemd128, ripemd160, ripemd256, ripemd320
• salsa10, salsa20
• sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, sha512
• snefru, snefru256
• tiger128,3, tiger160,3, tiger192,3
• tiger128,4, tiger160,4, tiger192,4
• whirpool

The function hash () is part of version 5 of PHP. For older versions of PHP, you can use the mhash extension, with which you can also calculate the hash.