Why is crypto.subtle.digest designed to return a promise?

Every other system I’ve ever worked with has the signature hash(bytes) => bytes, yet whatever committee designed the Subtle Crypto API decided that the browser version should return a promise. Why? I’ve looked around but I’ve never found any discussion on the motivation behind that.

  • EthanOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    7 months ago

    You consider calculating the hash of a few bytes to be heavy lifting?

    • macniel@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      The API doesn’t restrict the amount of bytes to be hashed. So yeah it’s still heavy lifting.

      Trigger a loading event after the constructor is finished that the view model takes to calculate your hash.