Xbase++

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 nSuccess
LOCAL oPrivKey
LOCAL cEncoded

nSuccess := 0

//  Load a private key to export.
oPrivKey := CreateObject("Chilkat.PrivateKey")
nSuccess := oPrivKey:LoadPemFile("qa_data/private.pem")
IF (nSuccess == 0)
    ? oPrivKey:LastErrorText
    oPrivKey:destroy()
    RETURN
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".
cEncoded := oPrivKey:GetPkcs8ENC("base64")
IF (oPrivKey:LastMethodSuccess == 0)
    ? oPrivKey:LastErrorText
    oPrivKey:destroy()
    RETURN
ENDIF

? cEncoded

oPrivKey:destroy()