Creating an md5 hash of a number, string, array, or hash in Ruby

Question

I need to create a signature string for a variable in Ruby, where the variable can be a number, a string, a hash, or an array. The hash values and array elements can also be any of these types.

This string will be used to compare the values in a database (Mongo, in this case).

My first thought was to create an MD5 hash of a JSON encoded value, like so: (body is the variable referred to above)

def createsig(body)    
  Digest::MD5.hexdigest(JSON.generate(body))
end

This nearly works, but JSON.generate does not encode the keys of a hash in the same order each time, so createsig({:a=>'a',:b=>'b'}) does not always equal createsig({:b=>'b',:a=>'a'}).

What is the best way to create a signature string to fit this need?

Note: For the detail oriented among us, I know that you can't JSON.generate() a number or a string. In these cases, I would just call MD5.hexdigest() directly.

Answer 1

I coding up the following pretty quickly and don't have time to really test it here at work, but it ought to do the job. Let me know if you find any issues with it and I'll take a look.

This should properly flatten out and sort the arrays and hashes, and you'd need to have to some pretty strange looking strings for there to be any collisions.

def createsig(body)
  Digest::MD5.hexdigest( sigflat body )
end

def sigflat(body)
  if body.class == Hash
    arr = []
    body.each do |key, value|
      arr << "#{sigflat key}=>#{sigflat value}"
    end
    body = arr
  end
  if body.class == Array
    str = ''
    body.map! do |value|
      sigflat value
    end.sort!.each do |value|
      str << value
    end
  end
  if body.class != String
    body = body.to_s << body.class.to_s
  end
  body
end

> sigflat({:a => {:b => 'b', :c => 'c'}, :d => 'd'}) == sigflat({:d => 'd', :a => {:c => 'c', :b => 'b'}})
=> true