So, you want to use bcrypt? Awesome! However, like other areas of cryptography, you shouldn't be doing it yourself. If you need to worry about anything like managing keys, or storing salts or generating random numbers, you're doing it wrong.

The reason is simple: it's so trivially easy to screw up bcrypt. In fact, if you look at almost every piece of code on this page, you'll notice that it's violating at least one of these common problems.

Face It, Cryptography is hard.

Leave it for the experts. Leave it for people whose job it is to maintain these libraries. If you need to make a decision, you're doing it wrong.

Instead, just use a library. Several exist depending on your requirements.

Libraries

Here is a breakdown of some of the more common APIs.

PHP 5.5 API - (Available for 5.3.7+)

Starting in PHP 5.5, a new API for hashing passwords is being introduced. There is also a shim compatibility library maintained (by me) for 5.3.7+. This has the benefit of being a peer-reviewed and simple to use implementation.

function register($username, $password) {
    $hash = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_BCRYPT);
    save($username, $hash);
}

function login($username, $password) {
    $hash = loadHashByUsername($username);
    if (password_verify($password, $hash)) {
        //login
    } else {
        // failure
    }
}

Really, it's aimed to be extremely simple.

Resources:

• Documentation: on PHP.net
• Compatibility Library: on GitHub
• PHP's RFC: on wiki.php.net

Zend\Crypt\Password\Bcrypt (5.3.2+)