Generate MD5 hash string with T-SQL

Question

Is there a way to generate MD5 Hash string of type varchar(32) without using fn_varbintohexstr

SUBSTRING(master.dbo.fn_varbintohexstr(HashBytes(\'MD5\', \'em         


        

Answer 1

You didn't explicitly say you wanted the string to be hex; if you are open to the more space efficient base 64 string encoding, and you are using SQL Server 2016 or later, here's an alternative:

select SubString(h, 1, 32) from OpenJson(
    (select HashBytes('MD5', 'email@dot.com') h for json path)
) with (h nvarchar(max));

This produces:

9TvQiSDl0lgJ3yVj75xStg==