/libsodium.js

libsodium compiled to pure JavaScript, with convenient wrappers

Primary LanguageJavaScriptOtherNOASSERTION

libsodium.js

Overview

The sodium crypto library compiled to pure JavaScript using Emscripten, with automatically generated wrappers to make it easy to use in web applications.

The complete library weights 151 Kb (minified, gzipped) and can run in a web browser as well as server-side.

Compatibility

Supported browsers/JS engines:

  • Chrome >= 16
  • Edge >= 0.11
  • Firefox >= 21
  • Internet Explorer >= 11
  • Mobile Safari on iOS >= 8.0 (older versions produce incorrect results)
  • NodeJS / io.js
  • Opera >= 15
  • Safari >= 6 (older versions produce incorrect results)

Installation

Ready-to-use files based on libsodium 1.0.3 can be directly copied to your project.

Usage with global definitions, for web browsers

Use Bower:

$ bower install libsodium.js

or directly include a copy of the sodium.min.js file.

Including the sodium.min.js file will add a sodium object to the global namespace.

If a sodium object is already present in the global namespace, and the sodium.onload function is defined, this function will be called right after the library has been loaded and initialized.

<script>
window.sodium = { onload: function(sodium) {
  alert(sodium.to_hex(sodium.crypto_generichash(64, 'test')));
}};
</script>
...
<script src="sodium.js" async defer></script>

As an alternative, use a module loader or Browserify as described below.

Usage with CommonJS/AMD/ES6 import

Copy the .js files for libsodium and libsodium-wrappers to your project and load the libsodium-wrappers module.

Alternatively, use npm. The npm package is called libsodium-wrappers and includes a dependency on the raw libsodium module.

var sodium = require('libsodium-wrappers');
console.log(sodium.to_hex(sodium.crypto_generichash(64, 'test')));

List of wrapped algorithms and functions:

Additional helpers

  • from_base64(), to_base64()
  • from_hex(), to_hex()
  • from_string(), to_string()
  • memcmp() (constant-time comparison, returns true or false)
  • memzero() (applies to Uint8Array objects)
  • increment() (increments an arbitrary-long number stored as a little-endian Uint8Array - typically to increment nonces)

API

The API exposed by the wrappers is identical to the one of the C library, except that buffer lengths never need to be explicitly given.

Binary input buffers should be Uint8Array objects. However, if a string is given instead, the wrappers will automatically convert the string to an array containing a UTF-8 representation of the string.

Example:

var key = sodium.randombytes_buf(sodium.crypto_shorthash_KEYBYTES),
    hash1 = sodium.crypto_shorthash(new Uint8Array([1, 2, 3, 4]), key),
    hash2 = sodium.crypto_shorthash('test', key);

If the output is a unique binary buffer, it is returned as a Uint8Array object.

However, an extra parameter can be given to all wrapped functions, in order to specify what format the output should be in. Valid options are `uint8array' (default), 'text', 'hex' and 'base64'.

Example:

var key = sodium.randombytes_buf(sodium.crypto_shorthash_KEYBYTES),
    hash_hex = sodium.crypto_shorthash('test', key, 'hex');

In addition, the from_base64, to_base64, from_hex, to_hex, from_string, and to_string functions are available to explicitly convert base64, hexadecimal, and arbitrary string representations from/to Uint8Array objects.

Functions returning more than one output buffer are returning them as an object. For example, the sodium.crypto_box_keypair() function returns the following object:

{ keyType: 'curve25519', privateKey: (Uint8Array), publicKey: (Uint8Array) }

Compilation

If you want to compile the files yourself, the following dependencies need to be installed on your system:

  • autoconf
  • automake
  • emscripten
  • git
  • io.js or nodejs
  • libtool
  • make
  • mocha (npm install -g mocha)
  • zopfli

Running make will clone libsodium, build it, test it, build the wrapper, and create the modules and minified distribution files.

Authors

Built by Ahmad Ben Mrad and Frank Denis.

License

This wrapper is distributed under the ISC License.