Objective-C

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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Objective-C

#import <CkoPrivateKey.h>
#import <NSString.h>

BOOL success = NO;

//  Load a private key to export.
CkoPrivateKey *privKey = [[CkoPrivateKey alloc] init];
success = [privKey LoadPemFile: @"qa_data/private.pem"];
if (success == NO) {
    NSLog(@"%@",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".
NSString *encoded = [privKey GetPkcs8ENC: @"base64"];
if (privKey.LastMethodSuccess == NO) {
    NSLog(@"%@",privKey.LastErrorText);
    return;
}

NSLog(@"%@",encoded);