Certificate

This is an interface of abstract methods for managing a variety of identity certificates. An identity certificate is a guarantee by a principal that a key is that of another principal. (A principal represents an entity such as an individual user, a group, or a corporation.)

In particular, this interface is intended to be a common abstraction for constructs that have different formats but important common uses. For example, different types of certificates, such as X.509 certificates and PGP certificates, share general certificate functionality (the need to encode and decode certificates) and some types of information, such as a key, the principal whose key it is, and the guarantor guaranteeing that the key is that of the specified principal. So an implementation of X.509 certificates and an implementation of PGP certificates can both utilize the Certificate interface, even though their formats and additional types and amounts of information stored are different.

Important: This interface is useful for cataloging and grouping objects sharing certain common uses. It does not have any semantics of its own. In particular, a Certificate object does not make any statement as to the validity of the binding. It is the duty of the application implementing this interface to verify the certificate and satisfy itself of its validity.

@author Benjamin Renaud @deprecated A new certificate handling package is created in the Java platform. This Certificate interface is entirely deprecated and is here to allow for a smooth transition to the new package. @see java.security.cert.Certificate

interface Certificate {

void encode(OutputStream stream);

void decode(InputStream stream);

string getFormat();

string toString(bool detailed);

}

Members

Functions

decode void decode(InputStream stream): Decodes a certificate from an input stream. The format should be that returned by {@code getFormat} and produced by {@code encode}.
encode void encode(OutputStream stream): Encodes the certificate to an output stream in a format that can be decoded by the {@code decode} method.
getFormat string getFormat(): Returns the name of the coding format. This is used as a hint to find an appropriate parser. It could be "X.509", "PGP", etc. This is the format produced and understood by the {@code encode} and {@code decode} methods.
toString string toString(bool detailed): Returns a string that represents the contents of the certificate.

Certificate

Members

Functions

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