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Export a PKCS #8 Private Key as Encoded Text

See more Private Key Examples

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.

Chilkat Zig Downloads

Zig
const std = @import("std");
const chilkat = @import("chilkat");

pub fn main(init: std.process.Init) !void {
    const alloc = init.arena.allocator();

    // Load a private key to export.
    const priv_key = try chilkat.PrivateKey.init();
    defer priv_key.deinit();
    priv_key.loadPemFile("qa_data/private.pem") catch {
        std.debug.print("{s}\n", .{try priv_key.getLastErrorText(alloc)});
        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".
    const encoded = priv_key.getPkcs8ENC(alloc, "base64") catch {
        std.debug.print("{s}\n", .{try priv_key.getLastErrorText(alloc)});
        return;
    };

    std.debug.print("{s}\n", .{encoded});
}