🚨 *** The v1.0.0 release brought an up to 3-4x performance
improvement and a streaming API. There were some breaking changes and
new engine requirements. For details see the
v1.0.0 release notes, which can also be found in the
CHANGELOG.md.***
A WebAssembly implementation of xxHash, a fast non-cryptographic hash algorithm. It can be called seamlessly from JavaScript. You can use it like any other JavaScript library but still get the benefits of WebAssembly, no special setup needed.
npm install --save xxhash-wasmOr with Yarn:
yarn add xxhash-wasmFrom Unpkg
<script type="module">
import xxhash from "https://unpkg.com/xxhash-wasm/esm/xxhash-wasm.js";
</script><script src="https://unpkg.com/xxhash-wasm/umd/xxhash-wasm.js"></script>The global xxhash will be available.
The WebAssembly is contained in the JavaScript bundle, so you don't need to manually fetch it and create a new WebAssembly instance.
import xxhash from "xxhash-wasm";
// Creates the WebAssembly instance.
xxhash().then(hasher => {
const input = "The string that is being hashed";
// 32-bit version
hasher.h32(input); // 3998627172 (decimal representation)
// For convenience, get hash as string of its zero-padded hex representation
hasher.h32ToString(input); // "ee563564"
// 64-bit version
hasher.h64(input); // 5776724552493396044n (BigInt)
// For convenience, get hash as string of its zero-padded hex representation
hasher.h64ToString(input); // "502b0c5fc4a5704c"
});Or with async/await and destructuring:
// Creates the WebAssembly instance.
const { h32, h64 } = await xxhash();
const input = "The string that is being hashed";
// 32-bit version
h32(input); // 3998627172 (decimal representation)
// 64-bit version
h64(input); // 5776724552493396044n (BigInt)xxhash-wasm supports a crypto-like streaming api, useful for avoiding memory
consumption when hashing large amounts of data:
const { create32, create64 } = await xxhash();
// 32-bit version
create32()
.update("some data")
// update accepts either a string or Uint8Array
.update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
.digest(); // 955607085
// 64-bit version
create64()
.update("some data")
// update accepts either a string or Uint8Array
.update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
.digest(); // 883044157688673477nIt doesn't matter whether you are using CommonJS or ES Modules in Node
(e.g. with "type": "module" in package.json or using the explicit file
extensions .cjs or .mjs respectively), importing xxhash-wasm will always
load the corresponding module, as both bundles are provided and specified in
the exports field of its package.json, therefore the appropriate one will
automatically be selected.
Using ES Modules
import xxhash from "xxhash-wasm";Using CommonJS
const xxhash = require("xxhash-wasm");For performance sensitive applications, xxhash-wasm provides the h** and
h**Raw APIs, which return raw numeric hash results rather than zero-padded hex
strings. The overhead of the string conversion in the h**ToString APIs can be
as much as 20% of overall runtime when hashing small byte-size inputs, and the
string result is often inconsequential (for example when simply checking if the
the resulting hashes are the same). When necessary, getting a zero-padded hex
string from the provided number or BigInt results is easily
achieved via result.toString(16).padStart(16, "0") and the h**ToString APIs
are purely for convenience.
The h**, h**ToString, and streaming APIs make use of
TextEncoder.encodeInto to directly encode
strings as a stream of UTF-8 bytes into the WebAssembly memory buffer, meaning
that for string-hashing purposes, these APIs will be significantly faster than
converting the string to bytes externally and using the Raw API. That said,
for large strings it may be beneficial to consider the streaming API or another
approach to encoding, as encodeInto is forced to allocate 3-times the string
length to account for the chance the input string contains high-byte-count
code units.
If possible, defer the encoding of the string to the hashing, unless you need
to use the encoded string (bytes) for other purposes as well, or you are
creating the bytes differently (e.g. different encoding), in which case it's
much more efficient to use the h**Raw APIs instead of having to unnecessarily
convert them to a string first.
In an effort to make this library as performant as possible, it uses several recent additions to browsers, Node and the WebAssembly specification. Notably, these include:
BigIntsupport in WebAssembly- Bulk memory operations in WebAssembly
TextEncoder.encodeInto
Taking all of these requirements into account, xxhash-wasm should be
compatible with:
- Chrome >= 85
- Edge >= 79
- Firefox >= 79
- Safari >= 15.0
- Node >= 15.0
If support for an older engine is required, [email protected] is available
with much broader engine support, but 3-4x slower hashing performance.
const {
h32,
h32ToString,
h32Raw,
create32,
h64,
h64ToString,
h64Raw,
create64,
} = await xxhash();Create a WebAssembly instance.
h32(input: string, [seed: u32]): numberGenerate a 32-bit hash of the UTF-8 encoded bytes of input. The optional
seed is a u32 and any number greater than the maximum (0xffffffff) is
wrapped, which means that 0xffffffff + 1 = 0.
Returns a u32 number containing the hash value.
h32ToString(input: string, [seed: u32]): stringSame as h32, but returning a zero-padded hex string.
h32Raw(input: Uint8Array, [seed: u32]): numberSame as h32 but with a Uint8Array as input instead of a string.
h64(input: string, [seed: bigint]): bigintGenerate a 64-bit hash of the UTF-8 encoded bytes of input. The optional
seed is a u64 provided as a BigInt.
Returns a u64 bigint containing the hash value.
h64ToString(input: string, [seed: bigint]): stringSame as h64, but returning a zero-padded hex string.
h64Raw(input: Uint8Array, [seed: bigint]): bigintSame as h64 but with a Uint8Array as input instead of a string.
type XXHash<T> {
update(input: string | Uint8Array): XXHash<T>;
digest(): T
}The streaming API mirrors Node's built-in crypto.createHash, providing
update and digest methods to add data to the hash and compute the final hash
value, respectively.
create32([seed: number]): XXHash<number>Create a 32-bit hash for streaming applications.
create64([seed: bigint]): XXHash<bigint>Create a 64-bit hash for streaming applications.
Comparison to xxhashjs
xxhashjs is implemented in pure JavaScript and because JavaScript
is lacking support for 64-bit integers, it uses a workaround with
cuint. Not only is that a big performance hit, but it also increases
the bundle size by quite a bit when it's used in the browser.
This library (xxhash-wasm) has the big advantage that WebAssembly supports
u64 and also some instructions (e.g. rotl), which would otherwise have
to be emulated. However, The downside is that you have to initialise
a WebAssembly instance, which takes a little over 2ms in Node and about 1ms in
the browser. But once the instance is created, it can be used without any
further overhead. For the benchmarks below, the instantiation is done before the
benchmark and therefore it's excluded from the results, since it wouldn't make
sense to always create a new WebAssembly instance.
Benchmarks are using Benchmark.js with random strings of different lengths. Higher is better
| String length | xxhashjs 32-bit | xxhashjs 64-bit | xxhash-wasm 32-bit | xxhash-wasm 64-bit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 byte | 513,517 ops/sec | 11,896 ops/sec | 5,752,446 ops/sec | 4,438,501 ops/sec |
| 10 bytes | 552,133 ops/sec | 12,953 ops/sec | 6,240,640 ops/sec | 4,855,340 ops/sec |
| 100 bytes | 425,277 ops/sec | 10,838 ops/sec | 5,470,011 ops/sec | 4,314,904 ops/sec |
| 1,000 bytes | 102,165 ops/sec | 6,697 ops/sec | 3,283,526 ops/sec | 3,332,556 ops/sec |
| 10,000 bytes | 13,010 ops/sec | 1,452 ops/sec | 589,068 ops/sec | 940,350 ops/sec |
| 100,000 bytes | 477 ops/sec | 146 ops/sec | 61,824 ops/sec | 98,959 ops/sec |
| 1,000,000 bytes | 36.40 ops/sec | 12.93 ops/sec | 5,122 ops/sec | 8,632 ops/sec |
| 10,000,000 bytes | 3.12 ops/sec | 1.19 ops/sec | 326 ops/sec | 444 ops/sec |
| 100,000,000 bytes | 0.31 ops/sec | 0.13 ops/sec | 27.84 ops/sec | 34.56 ops/sec |
xxhash-wasm outperforms xxhashjs significantly, the 32-bit is up to 90 times
faster (generally increases as the size of the input grows), and the 64-bit is
up to 350 times faster (generally increases as the size of the input grows).
The 64-bit version is the faster algorithm but there is a small degree of overhead involved in using BigInts, and so it retains a performance advantage over all lengths over xxhashjs and the 32-bit algorithm above ~1000 bytes.
xxhash-wasm also significantly outperforms Node's built-in hash algorithms,
making it suitable for use in a wide variety of situations, where
non-cryptographic hashes are acceptable. Benchmarks from an x64 MacBook Pro
running Node 17.3:
| String length | Node crypto md5 |
Node crypto sha1 |
xxhash-wasm 64-bit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 byte | 342,924 ops/sec | 352,825 ops/sec | 4,438,501 ops/sec |
| 10 bytes | 356,596 ops/sec | 352,209 ops/sec | 4,855,340 ops/sec |
| 100 bytes | 354,898 ops/sec | 355,024 ops/sec | 4,314,904 ops/sec |
| 1,000 bytes | 249,242 ops/sec | 271,383 ops/sec | 3,332,556 ops/sec |
| 10,000 bytes | 62,896 ops/sec | 80,986 ops/sec | 940,350 ops/sec |
| 100,000 bytes | 7,316 ops/sec | 10,198 ops/sec | 98,959 ops/sec |
| 1,000,000 bytes | 698 ops/sec | 966 ops/sec | 8,632 ops/sec |
| 10,000,000 bytes | 58.98 ops/sec | 79.78 ops/sec | 444 ops/sec |
| 100,000,000 bytes | 6.30 ops/sec | 8.20 ops/sec | 34.56 ops/sec |
If suitable for your use case, the Raw API offers significant throughput
improvements over the string-hashing API, particularly for smaller inputs,
assuming that you have access to the Uint8Array already (see also the
Performance section):
| String length | xxhash-wasm 64-bit Raw | xxhash-wasm 64-bit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 byte | 9,342,811 ops/sec | 4,438,501 ops/sec |
| 10 bytes | 9,668,989 ops/sec | 4,855,340 ops/sec |
| 100 bytes | 8,775,845 ops/sec | 4,314,904 ops/sec |
| 1,000 bytes | 5,541,403 ops/sec | 3,332,556 ops/sec |
| 10,000 bytes | 1,079,866 ops/sec | 940,350 ops/sec |
| 100,000 bytes | 113,350 ops/sec | 98,959 ops/sec |
| 1,000,000 bytes | 9,779 ops/sec | 8,632 ops/sec |
| 10,000,000 bytes | 563 ops/sec | 444 ops/sec |
| 100,000,000 bytes | 43.77 ops/sec | 34.56 ops/sec |
Both libraries can be used in the browser and they provide a UMD bundle. The bundles are self-contained, that means they can be included and used without having to add any other dependencies. The table shows the bundle size of the minified versions. Lower is better.
| xxhashjs | xxhash-wasm | |
|---|---|---|
| Bundle size | 41.5kB | 11.4kB |
| Gzipped Size | 10.3kB | 2.3kB |