java.security.cert

Class CertificateFactorySpi

java.lang.Object

java.security.cert.CertificateFactorySpi

public abstract class CertificateFactorySpi
extends Object

This class defines the Service Provider Interface (SPI) for the CertificateFactory class. All the abstract methods in this class must be implemented by each cryptographic service provider who wishes to supply the implementation of a certificate factory for a particular certificate type, e.g., X.509.

Certificate factories are used to generate certificate, certification path (CertPath) and certificate revocation list (CRL) objects from their encodings.

A certificate factory for X.509 must return certificates that are an instance of java.security.cert.X509Certificate, and CRLs that are an instance of java.security.cert.X509CRL.

Since:

1.2

Author:

Hemma Prafullchandra, Jan Luehe, Sean Mullan

See Also:

CertificateFactory, Certificate, X509Certificate

Constructor Summary

Constructors

Constructor and Description
CertificateFactorySpi()

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
abstract Certificate	engineGenerateCertificate(InputStream inStream) Generates a certificate object and initializes it with the data read from the input stream inStream.

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object

clone, equals, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait

Constructor Detail

CertificateFactorySpi

public CertificateFactorySpi()

Method Detail

engineGenerateCertificate

public abstract Certificate engineGenerateCertificate(InputStream inStream)
                                               throws CertificateException

Generates a certificate object and initializes it with the data read from the input stream inStream.

In order to take advantage of the specialized certificate format supported by this certificate factory, the returned certificate object can be typecast to the corresponding certificate class. For example, if this certificate factory implements X.509 certificates, the returned certificate object can be typecast to the X509Certificate class.

In the case of a certificate factory for X.509 certificates, the certificate provided in inStream must be DER-encoded and may be supplied in binary or printable (Base64) encoding. If the certificate is provided in Base64 encoding, it must be bounded at the beginning by -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----, and must be bounded at the end by -----END CERTIFICATE-----.

Note that if the given input stream does not support mark and reset, this method will consume the entire input stream. Otherwise, each call to this method consumes one certificate and the read position of the input stream is positioned to the next available byte after the inherent end-of-certificate marker. If the data in the input stream does not contain an inherent end-of-certificate marker (other than EOF) and there is trailing data after the certificate is parsed, a CertificateException is thrown.

Parameters:

inStream - an input stream with the certificate data.

Returns:

a certificate object initialized with the data from the input stream.

Throws:

CertificateException - on parsing errors.