Delphi ActiveX

Export a Traditional Private Key as Encoded Text

Demonstrates the Chilkat PrivateKey.GetPkcs1ENC method, which exports the key as the traditional/preferred unencrypted 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: This is the encoded-text form of the traditional DER representation — the same bytes the traditional PEM wraps, but returned as a string in the encoding you choose. Use it when a legacy consumer needs the traditional key structure delivered as text rather than as a PEM file. The DER is unencrypted, so the result is sensitive.

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var
success: Integer;
privKey: TPrivateKey;
encoded: WideString;

begin
success := 0;

//  Load a private key to export.
privKey := TPrivateKey.Create(Self);
success := privKey.LoadPemFile('qa_data/private.pem');
if (success = 0) then
  begin
    Memo1.Lines.Add(privKey.LastErrorText);
    Exit;
  end;

//  Export as the traditional/preferred unencrypted DER, then encode the DER bytes as text.  The
//  only argument names the binary encoding, such as "base64" or "hex".
encoded := privKey.GetPkcs1ENC('base64');
if (privKey.LastMethodSuccess = 0) then
  begin
    Memo1.Lines.Add(privKey.LastErrorText);
    Exit;
  end;
Memo1.Lines.Add(encoded);