js-spark-md5 VS nodejs-mobile

ActiveStorage uses the SparkMD5 library for MD5 hashing. I don't know enough about the library to know if MD5 is necessary or if we could use SHA-x hashing or similar. SparkMD5 is roughly 2.5kb and ActiveStorage is ~5kb overall, which means MD5 hashing accounts for roughly half the library.

However, RN has still a lack of binary support. Unlike NodeJS, RN doesn't come with native modules for dealing with binary data out of the box, like crypto and Buffer. When it comes to processing binary data, calculating a digest hash like SHA-1 and MD5 and converting from/to hex and base64 are popular tasks. To accomplish those tasks, you have to use JavaScript libraries like spark-md5 and buffer. If you need crypto module, you have to install rn-nodeify and a bunch of polyfill libraries, which eventually messes up your project and makes it hard to maintain. So, implementing the end-to-end encryption in React Native has been a big challenge for me.

“This isn't as straight forward as it seems. Porting NodeJS and its underlying JavaScript engine to iOS is challenging and currently we rely on https://github.com/JaneaSystems/nodejs-mobile which is no longer actively maintained. Codesandbox's Play.js uses a modified version of it but it's still at 12.19.0.

The React Native community is not focusing on providing solid APIs for binary data, unlike NodeJS. They are working on improving it as a front-end framework instead. And they would rely on extensions for other things like platform-dependent features. There is a project called nodejs-mobile which allows you to integrate NodeJS into your app. While it'd be fun for hobby projects, it's scary to rely on such a minor framework for my app focusing on its longevity. In fact, this library looks inactive these days.