serverpod_argon2

serverpod_argon2

Argon2 password hashing for Dart and Flutter, backed by the Argon2 implementation in the Zig standard library.

• Native platforms load a prebuilt shared library through build hooks (native assets).
• The web loads the same code compiled to WebAssembly, embedded in the package. This works with both dart2js and dart2wasm.
• No toolchain is needed. Prebuilt libraries ship in the package for every supported target.

Usage

import 'package:serverpod_argon2/serverpod_argon2.dart';

final argon2 = await Argon2.load();

// $argon2id$v=19$m=19456,t=2,p=1$<salt>$<hash>
final encoded = argon2.hash('correct horse battery staple');

final ok = argon2.verify('correct horse battery staple', encoded);

hash defaults to Argon2Parameters.owasp (argon2id, 19 MiB, 2 iterations) and a random 16 byte salt. verify accepts PHC strings from any Argon2 implementation, as long as they use version 19. deriveKey returns raw bytes and takes the optional RFC 9106 secret and associatedData inputs.

Hashing runs on the calling thread and is slow by design. On native platforms, move it off the main isolate:

final encoded = await Isolate.run(() => argon2.hash(password));

Parallelism

The library is built single-threaded, so the p lanes are computed one after another. Hashes with p > 1 are still correct and compatible with other implementations, but take p times longer than a multithreaded implementation would. For more throughput, hash on several isolates.

Supported targets

OS	Architectures
macOS	arm64 (11.0+), x64 (10.15+)
iOS	arm64 (13.0+), arm64 and x64 simulators
Android	arm64, arm, x64
Linux	x64, arm64, arm, riscv64
Windows	x64, arm64
Web	Any browser with WebAssembly

The libraries are pure Zig and link no libc. On Linux they run on any glibc or musl distribution.

Performance

benchmark/argon2_benchmark.dart compares against the pure Dart implementations in pointycastle and cryptography, after checking all three produce identical output. The file header shows how to run it in each mode. Results on an Intel Mac, argon2id with OWASP parameters, in ms per hash:

Implementation	Dart JIT	Dart AOT	JavaScript (Node)
serverpod_argon2	43	46	40
cryptography	200	183	647
pointycastle	307	274	5996

Developing

A git checkout has no prebuilt libraries, so the build hook compiles from source. That needs the zig version in build.zig.zon (minimum_zig_version), either installed directly or through anyzig.

• zig build test runs the RFC 9106 vectors against the Zig code.
• dart test -p vm,chrome runs the Dart tests natively and in the browser.

Publishing

See PUBLISH.md.