xxhash-wasm

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.

Table of Contents

• Installation
  • From npm
  • From Unpkg
    • ES Modules
    • UMD build
  • Cloudflare Workers
• Usage
  • Streaming Example
  • Node
• Performance
  • Engine Requirements
• API
  • h32
  • h64
  • Streaming
• Comparison to xxhashjs
  • Benchmarks
  • Bundle size

Installation

From npm

npm install --save xxhash-wasm

Or with Yarn:

yarn add xxhash-wasm

From Unpkg

ES Modules

<script type="module">
  import xxhash from "https://unpkg.com/xxhash-wasm/esm/xxhash-wasm.js";
</script>

UMD build

<script src="https://unpkg.com/xxhash-wasm/umd/xxhash-wasm.js"></script>

The global xxhash will be available.

Cloudflare Workers

If you are using Cloudflare Workers (workerd) you can use the installed npm package as is. The xxhash-wasm package is compatible with Cloudflare Workers.

import xxhash from "xxhash-wasm";

Importing it will pick the correct file base on the conditional import from the package.json.

Usage

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)

Streaming Example

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(); // 883044157688673477n

Node

It 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");

Performance

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.

Engine Requirements

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:

1. BigInt support in WebAssembly
2. Bulk memory operations in WebAssembly
3. 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, xxhash-wasm@0.4.2 is available with much broader engine support, but 3-4x slower hashing performance.

API

const {
  h32,
  h32ToString,
  h32Raw,
  create32,
  h64,
  h64ToString,
  h64Raw,
  create64,
} = await xxhash();

Create a WebAssembly instance.

h32

h32(input: string, [seed: u32]): number

Generate 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]): string

Same as h32, but returning a zero-padded hex string.

h32Raw(input: Uint8Array, [seed: u32]): number

Same as h32 but with a Uint8Array as input instead of a string.

h64

h64(input: string, [seed: bigint]): bigint

Generate 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]): string

Same as h64, but returning a zero-padded hex string.

h64Raw(input: Uint8Array, [seed: bigint]): bigint

Same as h64 but with a Uint8Array as input instead of a string.

Streaming

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

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

Bundle size

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