Visual FoxPro

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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LOCAL lnSuccess
LOCAL loPrivKey
LOCAL lcEncoded

lnSuccess = 0

*  Load a private key to export.
loPrivKey = CreateObject('Chilkat.PrivateKey')
lnSuccess = loPrivKey.LoadPemFile("qa_data/private.pem")
IF (lnSuccess = 0) THEN
    ? loPrivKey.LastErrorText
    RELEASE loPrivKey
    CANCEL
ENDIF

*  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".
lcEncoded = loPrivKey.GetPkcs8ENC("base64")
IF (loPrivKey.LastMethodSuccess = 0) THEN
    ? loPrivKey.LastErrorText
    RELEASE loPrivKey
    CANCEL
ENDIF

? lcEncoded

RELEASE loPrivKey