1Object::Signature(3)  User Contributed Perl Documentation Object::Signature(3)
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NAME

6       Signature - Generate cryptographic signatures for objects
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SYNOPSIS

9         # In your module
10         package My::Module
11         use base 'Object::Signature';
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13         # In outside code
14         my $Object = My::Module->new;
15         print "Object Signature: " . $Object->signature;
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DESCRIPTION

18       Object::Signature is an abstract base class that you can inherit from
19       in order to allow your objects to generate unique cryptographic signa‐
20       tures.
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22       The method used to generate the signature is based on Storable and
23       Digest::MD5. The object is fed to "Storable::nfreeze" to get a string,
24       which is then passed to Digest::MD5::md5_hex to get a unique 32 charac‐
25       ter hexidecimal signature.
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METHODS

28       signature
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30       The "signature" method is the only method added to your class, and will
31       generate a unique 32 hexidecimal signature for any object it is called
32       on.
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SUPPORT

35       All bugs should be filed via the bug tracker at
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37       <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Object-Signature>
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39       For other issues, or commercial enhancement or support, contact the
40       author.
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TO DO

43       Incremental Generation
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45       Currently has to generate the entire Storable string before digesting
46       it. Would be nice if there was a way to incrementally Storablise and
47       Digest in one pass so that it becomes much more memory efficient for
48       large objects.
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50       Strengthen the Digest Algorithm
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52       Once the current (as of 2005) hashing controversy settles down, con‐
53       sider selecting a newer and more powerful hashing algorithm to replace
54       MD5. Or offer alternatives depending on how important the security sit‐
55       uation is, as MD5 is very fast (90 meg a second) and many more-secure
56       ones are a lot slower (more than 10 times slower in some cases).
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58       On our side is the fact we use Storable. It should be much harder to
59       create collisions when you don't control the string, only the structure
60       before it goes through Storable.
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AUTHORS

63       Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>
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66       Copyright 2004 - 2006 Adam Kennedy.
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68       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
69       under the same terms as Perl itself.
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71       The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included
72       with this module.
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76perl v5.8.8                       2006-10-02              Object::Signature(3)
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