SHA1 hashing in Rails

Question

I have database with following fields: id, q_id, text, session etc. and I have already 2 records there. I want to hash each line with SHA1 alghoritm (every line is unique of course). I tried this:

@w = Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(id+q_id+text+session)

but it doesn't work.

1) SHA1 is for hashing, not for encryption. Check, e.g., Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function) to read up on basics. 2) What *exactly* isn't working? — atzz, Mar 28 '11 at 07:58
SHA-1 is has been shown to be insecure. Consider using safer alternatives, such as SHA-256, or SHA-3. https://shattered.io/ — Jonas Elfström, Mar 23 '17 at 12:53

Jonas Elfström · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-05T07:28:58.700

31

SHA is not encryption but rather it creates a cryptographic hash. If that is still what you want to do, my guess is that id and q_id are Fixnums and needs to be converted to strings.

@w = Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(ans.id.to_s + ans.q_id.to_s + ans.text + ans.session)

I also kind of like to use String literals because it makes it very obvious that we are dealing with a string

@w = Digest::SHA1.hexdigest("#{id}#{q_id}#{text}#{session}")

edited Jul 05 '17 at 07:28

answered Mar 28 '11 at 08:07

Jonas Elfström

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See How do I create a SHA1 hash in ruby?(http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34490/how-do-i-create-a-sha1-hash-in-ruby) – Fernando Kosh Aug 22 '13 at 01:34

SHA1 hashing in Rails

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