Compute MD5 Checksum

The Compute MD5 Checksum data converter computes an MD5 checksum of the input text.

This data converter is useful for creating a digital fingerprint of a text or binary data, in order to easily detect changes in the data at some later point. As MD5 checksum can only be applied to binary data, any string input must be encoded before the MD5 can be applied. If the checksum generated from text is to be compared against a checksum generated by an external MD5 service, ensure that the external service used the same encoding as the robot.

Any text can be given as input, including the hexadecimal text representation that will result if it is read from an attribute containing binary data. The output of the data converter will be a 128-bit MD5 checksum of the text, represented as a 32-digit hexadecimal number. For all practical purposes, this number can be considered a unique identification of the input text. That is, in practice, two texts will never occur that result in the same MD5 checksum.

Properties

The Compute MD5 Checksum data converter can be configured using the following properties:

Encoding

The encoding used to encode the text before applying the md5.

Description

Type in a description to be shown in the list of data converters. If there is no type in a description, one will be generated.

Example

If the input text is

     The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

then the output will be:

     9E107D9D372BB6826BD81D3542A419D6

Even small changes in the input text will result in a completely different output. For example, if you change the 'd' in "dog" to an 'h', so that the input becomes:

     The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy hog

then the output will be:

     5681F8C64F7CA70B12E0B80435265203