How to get MD5 sum of a string using python?

Question

In the Flickr API docs, you need to find the MD5 sum of a string to generate the [api_sig] value.

How does one go about generating an MD5 sum from a string?

Flickr's example:

string: 000005fab4534d05api_key9a0554259914a86fb9e7eb014e4e5d52permswrite

MD5 sum: a02506b31c1cd46c2e0b6380fb94eb3d

Answer 1

You can do the following:

Python 2.x

import hashlib
print hashlib.md5("whatever your string is").hexdigest()

---

Python 3.x

import hashlib
print(hashlib.md5("whatever your string is".encode('utf-8')).hexdigest())

---

However in this case you're probably better off using this helpful Python module for interacting with the Flickr API:

• http://stuvel.eu/flickrapi

... which will deal with the authentication for you.

Official documentation of hashlib