I need to get the basics of this function. The php.net documentation states, for the blowfish algorithm, that:
Blowfish hashing with a salt as follow
Following code example may answer your questions.
To generate hashed password using Blowfish, you first need to generate a salt, which starts with $2a$ followed by iteration count and 22 characters of Base64 string.
$salt = '$2a$07$usesomadasdsadsadsadasdasdasdsadesillystringfors';
$digest = crypt('rasmuslerdorf', $salt);
Store the whole $digest in database, it has both the salt and digest.
When comparing password, just do this,
if (crypt($user_input, $digest) == $digest)
You are reusing the digest as salt. crypt knows how long is the salt from the algorithm identifier.