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.

  • macniel
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    228 days ago

    Sounds like an architectural issue to begin with. A constructor shouldn’t do the heavy lifting to begin with.

    • EthanOP
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      -228 days ago

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

      • macniel
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        328 days 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.