How do I use hashlib in Python?

How do I use hashlib in Python?

You can use the hashlib library in Python to create secure hashes. What specific hashing algorithm are you interested in?

I want to use SHA-256. How do I do that?

To use SHA-256, you can do the following:

import hashlib

# Create a new sha256 hash object
hash_object = hashlib.sha256()

# Update the hash object with the bytes-like object
hash_object.update(b'Hello World')

# Get the hexadecimal representation of the digest
hex_dig = hash_object.hexdigest()
print(hex_dig)

What if I want to hash a file instead of a string?

You can read the file in binary mode and update the hash object with the file's content. Here's how:

import hashlib

hash_object = hashlib.sha256()

with open('yourfile.txt', 'rb') as f:
    # Read the file in chunks to avoid memory issues
    for chunk in iter(lambda: f.read(4096), b''):
        hash_object.update(chunk)

print(hash_object.hexdigest())