SYNOPSIS
# In your module
package My::Module
use base 'Object::Signature';
# In outside code my $Object = My::Module->new; print "Object Signature: " . $Object->signature;
DESCRIPTION
Object::Signature is an abstract base class that you can inherit from in order to allow your objects to generate unique cryptographic signatures.The method used to generate the signature is based on Storable and Digest::MD5. The object is fed to "Storable::nfreeze" to get a string, which is then passed to Digest::MD5::md5_hex to get a unique 32 character hexidecimal signature.
METHODS
signature
The "signature" method is the only method added to your class, and will generate a unique 32 hexidecimal signature for any object it is called on.
SUPPORT
All bugs should be filed via the bug tracker at<http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Object-Signature>
For other issues, or commercial enhancement or support, contact the author.
TO DO
Incremental Generation
Currently has to generate the entire Storable string before digesting
it. Would be nice if there was a way to incrementally Storablise and Digest
in one pass so that it becomes much more memory efficient for large objects.
Strengthen the Digest Algorithm
Once the current (as of 2005) hashing controversy settles down, consider selecting a newer and more powerful hashing algorithm to replace MD5. Or offer alternatives depending on how important the security situation is, as MD5 is very fast (90 meg a second) and many more-secure ones are a lot slower (more than 10 times slower in some cases).
On our side is the fact we use Storable. It should be much harder to create collisions when you don't control the string, only the structure before it goes through Storable.