Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 05:51:37 -0700
From: db@shorter (David Brownell)
Message-Id: <199704281251.FAA02491@argon.eng.sun.com>
To: Mark.Bordas@East
Subject: Re: signature encoding
> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 17:46:07 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Mark Bordas <Mark.Bordas@East>
>
> The Signature.initSign() method returns an x.509 encoded byte array.
> Is there a class that can convert this back to the original data?
You'd use the sun.security.util.DerValue class, and friends, to turn
the values into arbitrary precision integers, or sequences thereof.
Or write your own DER support if you didn't want to use the one in
the "sun.security.util" package.
> In general, there are a number of classes in the sun.security package
> that don't seem to be documented (such as sun.security.x509.X509Cert).
For many of those -- including the X509 package -- you get API docs if
you run "javadoc" on the source code.
> Is that because they aren't intended to be accessed directly?
The issue was just to keep "the masses" from using APIs that needed
more work, while still having them be available to most folk who needed
them. The X509 APIs are more fully cooked than some I could mention
in "java.*", although they only cover the core X509v1 functionality.
An upcoming release of the JDK will have X509v3 support as a fully
supported ("java.*") feature.
> Are there any platform-dependency issues?
No platform dependency issues, though you'll notice that support for
RSA and Diffie-Hellman keys (and RSA signatures) is not part of the JDK
at this time.
- Dave
>
> mark
>
>