Visual Basic 6.0

Export a Public Key DER as Encoded Text

Demonstrates the Chilkat PublicKey.GetEncoded method, which returns the DER representation encoded as text. The first argument selects the DER representation (as for GetPem) and the second 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 returns the raw DER bytes as an encoded string, so the key can travel through a text-only medium without the BEGIN/END armor of PEM. Choosing base64 versus hex is simply a matter of what the consumer expects, and the first argument selects the same DER structures as GetPem.

Chilkat Visual Basic 6.0 Downloads

Download Chilkat for Visual Basic 6.0

Visual Basic 6.0

Dim success As Long
success = 0

'  Load a public key to export.  LoadFromFile inspects the content, so it accepts DER, PEM, XML,
'  JWK, and other supported representations.
Dim pubKey As New PublicKey
success = pubKey.LoadFromFile("qa_data/public.pem")
If (success = 0) Then
    Debug.Print pubKey.LastErrorText
    Exit Sub
End If

'  Export the DER as text.  The 1st argument selects the DER representation (as for GetPem) and
'  the 2nd names the binary encoding, such as "base64" or "hex".
Dim preferPkcs1 As Long
preferPkcs1 = 0
Dim encoded As String
encoded = pubKey.GetEncoded(preferPkcs1,"base64")
If (pubKey.LastMethodSuccess = 0) Then
    Debug.Print pubKey.LastErrorText
    Exit Sub
End If

Debug.Print encoded