How to md5 in monotouch?

Question

What's be best option for md5 hashing a string in monotouch?

Apparently traditional md5 don't work? http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/monotouch/2009-October/001339.html

...and then checked by a ASP.net webservice.

Answer 1

The email you refer to is very old (more than two years) and this was fixed a long time ago.

MD5, like all other hash algorithms (e.g. SHA1, all SHA-2 family and RIPEMD160), are all available in MonoTouch. The same is true for HMAC, symmetric and asymmetric algorithms.

The right way to create a cryptographic instance in .NET is to use the factory of the base class, e.g.

MD5 hash = MD5.Create ();

This will ensure the best implementation will be used by your code (if many are available, e.g. if a native or hardware optimized version is available) and will help make your code more portable.