The crypto extension provides functions for computing cryptographic hashes and for encoding or decoding binary data. All functions are available automatically — no setup is required.
Hash functions
Each hash function accepts a single argument of any non-null type (TEXT, BLOB, INTEGER, or REAL) and returns the hash as a BLOB.
| Function | Arguments | Returns | Description |
|---|
crypto_md5(X) | X — value to hash | BLOB | MD5 hash of X |
crypto_sha1(X) | X — value to hash | BLOB | SHA-1 hash of X |
crypto_sha256(X) | X — value to hash | BLOB | SHA-256 hash of X |
crypto_sha384(X) | X — value to hash | BLOB | SHA-384 hash of X |
crypto_sha512(X) | X — value to hash | BLOB | SHA-512 hash of X |
crypto_blake3(X) | X — value to hash | BLOB | BLAKE3 hash of X |
MD5 and SHA-1 are cryptographically broken. Do not use them for security-sensitive purposes such as password storage or digital signatures. They remain useful for checksums and non-security fingerprinting.
Examples
Compute a SHA-256 hash and encode the result as hex:
SELECT crypto_encode(crypto_sha256('hello'), 'hex');
-- 2cf24dba5fb0a30e26e83b2ac5b9e29e1b161e5c1fa7425e73043362938b9824
SELECT crypto_encode(crypto_blake3('hello'), 'hex');
SELECT id, crypto_encode(crypto_sha256(password), 'hex') AS hash
FROM users;
Encoding functions
Use crypto_encode and crypto_decode to convert between binary data and text representations.
| Function | Arguments | Returns | Description |
|---|
crypto_encode(X, format) | X — data to encode; format — encoding name | TEXT | Encodes X using the specified format |
crypto_decode(X, format) | X — encoded text; format — encoding name | TEXT | Decodes X from the specified format |
| Format | Description |
|---|
'hex' | Hexadecimal (lowercase) |
'base64' | Standard Base64 |
'base32' | Base32 |
'base85' | ASCII85 (without <~ / ~> delimiters) |
'url' | URL percent-encoding |
Examples
Encode a string as base64:
SELECT crypto_encode('hello world', 'base64');
-- aGVsbG8gd29ybGQ=
SELECT crypto_decode('aGVsbG8gd29ybGQ=', 'base64');
-- hello world
SELECT crypto_encode(crypto_sha256('turso'), 'hex');
SELECT crypto_encode('hello world & more', 'url');
-- hello%20world%20%26%20more
NULL handling
All functions return an error value when given a NULL argument. Use COALESCE if you need to handle nullable columns:
SELECT crypto_encode(crypto_sha256(COALESCE(data, '')), 'hex')
FROM documents;