Certificates

Detailed Description

SSL/TLS work starts with certificates. A server presents an identity, a client may present one, and both sides usually have a list of trusted CA certificates with which they verify the peer. Those certificates, and the private keys that belong to them, are loaded into a CertificateStore.

PKCS12 is the usual container: one file or memory buffer can hold several certificates and their keys, often protected by a password. PEM is the other encoding loadPem() accepts from memory. After a load, the store owns the certificates. A private key stays attached to its certificate and is not exposed by any function; selecting a certificate later as a context identity selects that key as well.

Certificates in the store are inspected by subject. subject() on a Certificate is the subject string, findCertificate() returns a certificate whose subject contains a substring or a null pointer, and getCertificate() does the same search and throws InvalidCertificate when nothing matches. begin() and end() walk the store. The store must outlive any reference or pointer taken from it.

The example loads PKCS12 data, lists subjects, and looks up one certificate by name. Using that certificate in a Context is the next chapter.

Pt::Ssl::CertificateStore store;
 
const char* password = ...;
std::ifstream ifs("certs.p12");
store.loadPkcs12(ifs, password);
 
Pt::Ssl::CertificateStore::ConstIterator it;
for(it = store.begin(); it != store.end(); ++it)
{
    std::cout << it->subject() << std::endl;
}
 
const Pt::Ssl::Certificate* cert = store.findCertificate("Example Server");
if( ! cert)
    return;

Classes
class	Certificate
	X509 certificate. More...
class	CertificateStore
	Store for X509 certificates and their keys. More...
class	InvalidCertificate
	Invalid SSL certificate or certificate chain. More...