Android™

Export a PKCS #8 Private Key as Encoded Text

Demonstrates the Chilkat PrivateKey.GetPkcs8ENC method, which exports the key as unencrypted PKCS #8 DER and encodes the DER bytes as text. The only argument names the binary encoding, such as base64 or hex.

Note: The file paths are relative to the application's current working directory. Absolute paths may also be used. Supply the paths appropriate to your own environment.

Background: DER is the compact binary form of a key; this method hands it back as encoded text so it can travel through channels that expect a string — a JSON field, a database column, a config value. It is the string-returning alternative to writing raw DER bytes, and choosing base64 versus hex is just a matter of what the consumer expects. The DER itself is unencrypted, so the encoded text is still sensitive.

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// Important: Don't forget to include the call to System.loadLibrary
// as shown at the bottom of this code sample.
package com.test;

import android.app.Activity;
import com.chilkatsoft.*;

import android.widget.TextView;
import android.os.Bundle;

public class SimpleActivity extends Activity {

  private static final String TAG = "Chilkat";

  // Called when the activity is first created.
  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    boolean success = false;

    //  Load a private key to export.
    CkPrivateKey privKey = new CkPrivateKey();
    success = privKey.LoadPemFile("qa_data/private.pem");
    if (success == false) {
        Log.i(TAG, privKey.lastErrorText());
        return;
        }

    //  Export as unencrypted PKCS #8 DER, then encode the DER bytes as text.  The only argument names
    //  the binary encoding, such as "base64" or "hex".
    String encoded = privKey.getPkcs8ENC("base64");
    if (privKey.get_LastMethodSuccess() == false) {
        Log.i(TAG, privKey.lastErrorText());
        return;
        }

    Log.i(TAG, encoded);

  }

  static {
      System.loadLibrary("chilkat");

      // Note: If the incorrect library name is passed to System.loadLibrary,
      // then you will see the following error message at application startup:
      //"The application <your-application-name> has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again."
  }
}