The launch of SwiftCrypto is a huge step ahead for server-side Swift, due to the fact even though we’ve had open-source Swift cryptography libraries in the previous this is the first one formally supported by way of Apple. Even better, Apple states that the “vast majority of the SwiftCrypto code is supposed to stay in lockstep with the contemporary model of Apple CryptoKit,” which ability it’s handy for builders to share code between Apple’s personal structures and Linux.

What’s in particular fantastic about SwiftCrypto is that if you use it on Apple systems it efficaciously will become obvious – it simply passes your calls immediately on to CryptoKit. This capability you can write your code as soon as the use of import Crypto, then share it everywhere. As Apple describes it, this capability SwiftCrypto “delegates all work to the core implementation of CryptoKit, as although SwiftCrypto used to be now not even there.”

The solely exception right here is that SwiftCrypto doesn’t furnish guide for the use of Apple’s Secure Enclave hardware, which is included into gadgets such as iPhones, Apple Watch, and modern-day Macs. As the Secure Enclave is solely reachable on Apple hardware, this omission is not going to show problematic.

Try it yourself
SwiftCrypto is accessible today, so why now not provide it a try?

If you’re the use of Xcode for your project, go to File > Swift Packages > Add Package Dependency to get started; if not, you can simply edit the Package.swift file directly. Either way, you must make it factor closer to https://github.com/apple/swift-crypto then pick “Up To Next Major”.

Once Xcode has downloaded the package deal (or if you’ve run swift package deal fetch from the command line), you can write some code to attempt it out.

For example, this will compute the SHA256 hash price of a string:

import Crypto let inputString = "Hello, SwiftCrypto" let inputData = Data(inputString.utf8) let hashed = SHA256.hash(data: inputData)

If you want to read that back as a string – for example, if you want to print the SHA so users can verify a file locally – you can create it like this:

let hashString = hashed.compactMap { String(format: "%02x", $0) }.joined()

For more information on SwiftCrypto read the official Swift.org announcement or check out the project on GitHub.