9.0 KiB
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
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.
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); // ee563564
// 64-bit version
hasher.h64(input); // 502b0c5fc4a5704c
});
Or with async/await and destructuring:
// Creates the WebAssembly instance.
const { h32, h64, h32Raw, h64Raw } = await xxhash();
const input = "The string that is being hashed";
// 32-bit version
h32(input); // ee563564
// 64-bit version
h64(input); // 502b0c5fc4a5704c
Node
This was initially meant for the browser, but Node 8 also added support for
WebAssembly, so it can be run in Node as well. The implementation uses
the browser API TextEncoder, which is has been added
recently to Node as util.TextEncoder, but it is not
a global. To compensate for that, a CommonJS bundle is created which
automatically imports util.TextEncoder.
Note: You will see a warning that it's experimental, but it should work just fine.
The main field in package.json points to the CommonJS bundle, so you can
require it as usual.
const xxhash = require("xxhash-wasm");
// Or explicitly use the cjs bundle
const xxhash = require("xxhash-wasm/cjs/xxhash-wasm");
If you want to bundle your application for Node with a module bundler that uses
the module field in package.json, such as webpack or Rollup, you will need
to explicitly import xxhash-wasm/cjs/xxhash-wasm otherwise the browser version
is used.
API
const { h32, h64 } = await xxhash()
Create a WebAssembly instance.
h32(input: string, [seed: u32]): string
Generate a 32-bit hash 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 string of the hash in hexadecimal.
h32Raw(input: Uint8Array, [seed: u32]): number
Same as h32 but with a Uint8Array as input instead of a string and returns the
hash as a number.
h64(input: string, [seedHigh: u32, seedLow: u32]): string
Generate a 64-bit hash of input. Because JavaScript doesn't support u64 the
seed is split into two u32, where seedHigh represents the first 32-bits of
the u64 and seedLow the remaining 32-bits. For example:
// Hex
seed64: ffffffff22222222
seedhigh: ffffffff
seedLow: 22222222
// Binary
seed64: 1111111111111111111111111111111100100010001000100010001000100010
seedhigh: 11111111111111111111111111111111
seedLow: 00100010001000100010001000100010
Each individual part of the seed is a u32 and they are also wrapped
individually for numbers greater than the maximum.
Returns a string of the hash in hexadecimal.
h64Raw(input: Uint8Array, [seedHigh: u32, seedLow: u32]): Uint8Array
Same as h64 but with a Uint8Array as input and output.
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.
There is still the problem that JavaScript can't represent 64-bit integers and
both the seed and the result of the 64-bit algorithm are u64. To work around
this, the seed and the result are split into two u32, which are assembled and
disassembled into/from a u64. Splitting the seed into two u32 isn't a big
deal, but the result is more problematic because to assemble the 64-bit hash in
JavaScript, 3 strings have to be created: The hex representation of the first
u32 and the hex representation of the second u32, which are then
concatenated to a 64-bit hex representation. That are 2 additional strings and
this is a notable overhead when the input is small.
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 | 683,014 ops/sec | 12,048 ops/sec | 1,475,214 ops/sec | 979,656 ops/sec |
| 10 bytes | 577,761 ops/sec | 12,073 ops/sec | 1,427,115 ops/sec | 960,567 ops/sec |
| 100 bytes | 379,348 ops/sec | 10,242 ops/sec | 1,186,211 ops/sec | 682,422 ops/sec |
| 1,000 bytes | 88,732 ops/sec | 7,755 ops/sec | 522,107 ops/sec | 504,409 ops/sec |
| 10,000 bytes | 11,754 ops/sec | 1,694 ops/sec | 93,817 ops/sec | 97,087 ops/sec |
| 100,000 bytes | 721 ops/sec | 174 ops/sec | 10,247 ops/sec | 11,069 ops/sec |
| 1,000,000 bytes | 55.38 ops/sec | 15.98 ops/sec | 1,019 ops/sec | 1,101 ops/sec |
| 10,000,000 bytes | 5.98 ops/sec | 1.77 ops/sec | 98.92 ops/sec | 107 ops/sec |
| 100,000,000 bytes | 0.63 ops/sec* | 0.19 ops/sec* | 9.95 ops/sec | 10.80 ops/sec |
* = Runs out of memory with the default heap size.
xxhash-wasm outperforms xxhashjs significantly, the 32-bit is up to 18 times
faster (increases as the size of the input grows), and the 64-bit is up to 81
times faster (decreases as the size of the input grows).
The 64-bit version is the faster algorithm, but it only starts to become faster
at a little over 1kB because of the above mentioned limitations of JavaScript
numbers. After that the 64-bit version is roughly 10% faster than the 32-bit
version. For xxhashjs the 64-bit is strictly worse.
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 | 3.7kB |
| Gzipped Size | 10.3kB | 1.2kB |