String encryption problem

Question

Hallo,
I need to encrypt password with MD5 algorithm. I'm using following method:
public static byte[] encryptStr(byte[] chars){
MessageDigest digest=null;
try {
digest = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
digest.reset();
digest.update(chars);
return digest.digest();
} catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RzJUtils.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
return null;
My application communicates with a servlet, so I have to send encrypted password to serwlet. But if I use the method in sending desktop application I get as encryption result following string: � �o,H�0�3�
�
If I use the same method serverside (in servlet) I get following string: — •o,Hćş0Đ3 
Î
I've tried with convertion between different charsets but without success. Why are the results different? Is there a way to get eqaul results in desktop application and in servlet?
with regards
Rafal Ziolkowski

Answer 1

Of course, what you get isn't a String at all, it's a byte array. If you want to display it I suggest you do so in hex. You can do this easily enough with something like:
private String toHex(byte[] bytes) {
   StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(bytes.length * 2);
   for (byte b : bytes)
        sb.append(String.format("%02x" b & 255);
   return sb,toString();
}That gets rid of problems w.r.t character encoding (at least, of the digest).
Incidentally it's confusing to call a digest "encryption".