Lua

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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Lua

local chilkat = require("chilkat")

-- Load a private key to export.
local privKey = chilkat.PrivateKey.new()
local success = privKey:load_pem_file("qa_data/private.pem")
if not success then
    print(privKey.last_error_text)
    return
end

-- 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".
local encoded = privKey:get_pkcs8_enc("base64")
if not privKey.last_method_success then
    print(privKey.last_error_text)
    return
end

print(encoded)