从其他答案中提取想法，这里有一个简单的代码，没有第三方依赖关系(或DatatypeConverter，在最新的jdk中更长)，将其生成为与md5sum工具输出兼容的十六进制字符串:

import java.io.IOException;
import java.math.BigInteger;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import java.security.MessageDigest;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
...

static String calculateMD5(String path) throws IOException
{
    try {
        MessageDigest md = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
        md.update(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(path)));
        return String.format("%032x", new BigInteger(1, md.digest())); // hex, padded to 32 chars
    } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException ex)
    {
        throw new RuntimeException(ex); // MD5 is always available so this should be impossible
    }
}

在Real的Java-How-to中有一个使用MessageDigest类的例子。

请查看该页面中使用CRC32和SHA-1的示例。

import java.io.*;
import java.security.MessageDigest;

public class MD5Checksum {

   public static byte[] createChecksum(String filename) throws Exception {
       InputStream fis =  new FileInputStream(filename);

       byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
       MessageDigest complete = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
       int numRead;

       do {
           numRead = fis.read(buffer);
           if (numRead > 0) {
               complete.update(buffer, 0, numRead);
           }
       } while (numRead != -1);

       fis.close();
       return complete.digest();
   }

   // see this How-to for a faster way to convert
   // a byte array to a HEX string
   public static String getMD5Checksum(String filename) throws Exception {
       byte[] b = createChecksum(filename);
       String result = "";

       for (int i=0; i < b.length; i++) {
           result += Integer.toString( ( b[i] & 0xff ) + 0x100, 16).substring( 1 );
       }
       return result;
   }

   public static void main(String args[]) {
       try {
           System.out.println(getMD5Checksum("apache-tomcat-5.5.17.exe"));
           // output :
           //  0bb2827c5eacf570b6064e24e0e6653b
           // ref :
           //  http://www.apache.org/dist/
           //          tomcat/tomcat-5/v5.5.17/bin
           //              /apache-tomcat-5.5.17.exe.MD5
           //  0bb2827c5eacf570b6064e24e0e6653b *apache-tomcat-5.5.17.exe
       }
       catch (Exception e) {
           e.printStackTrace();
       }
   }
}

使用Java 7的简单方法，没有第三方库

String path = "your complete file path";
MessageDigest md = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
md.update(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(path)));
byte[] digest = md.digest();

如果你需要打印这个字节数组。使用方法如下

System.out.println(Arrays.toString(digest));

如果你需要十六进制字符串出这个摘要。使用方法如下

String digestInHex = DatatypeConverter.printHexBinary(digest).toUpperCase();
System.out.println(digestInHex);

其中DatatypeConverter是javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter

Guava现在提供了一个新的、一致的哈希API，它比JDK中提供的各种哈希API更友好。参见哈希的解释。对于一个文件，你可以很容易地得到MD5和，CRC32(14.0+版本)或许多其他哈希值:

HashCode md5 = Files.hash(file, Hashing.md5());
byte[] md5Bytes = md5.asBytes();
String md5Hex = md5.toString();

HashCode crc32 = Files.hash(file, Hashing.crc32());
int crc32Int = crc32.asInt();

// the Checksum API returns a long, but it's padded with 0s for 32-bit CRC
// this is the value you would get if using that API directly
long checksumResult = crc32.padToLong();

谷歌guava提供了一个新的API。找到下面的一个:

public static HashCode hash(File file,
            HashFunction hashFunction)
                     throws IOException

Computes the hash code of the file using hashFunction.

Parameters:
    file - the file to read
    hashFunction - the hash function to use to hash the data
Returns:
    the HashCode of all of the bytes in the file
Throws:
    IOException - if an I/O error occurs
Since:
    12.0

下面是一个简单的函数，它包装了Sunil的代码，以File作为参数。该函数不需要任何外部库，但需要Java 7。

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.security.MessageDigest;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;

import javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter;

public class Checksum {

    /**
     * Generates an MD5 checksum as a String.
     * @param file The file that is being checksummed.
     * @return Hex string of the checksum value.
     * @throws NoSuchAlgorithmException
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public static String generate(File file) throws NoSuchAlgorithmException,IOException {

        MessageDigest messageDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
        messageDigest.update(Files.readAllBytes(file.toPath()));
        byte[] hash = messageDigest.digest();

        return DatatypeConverter.printHexBinary(hash).toUpperCase();
    }

    public static void main(String argv[]) throws NoSuchAlgorithmException, IOException {
        File file = new File("/Users/foo.bar/Documents/file.jar");          
        String hex = Checksum.generate(file);
        System.out.printf("hex=%s\n", hex);            
    }


}

示例输出:

hex=B117DD0C3CBBD009AC4EF65B6D75C97B