Certificate

public abstract class Certificate extends Object

Known Direct Subclasses X509Certificate X509Certificate Abstract class for X.509 v1 certificates.

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

This class is an abstraction for certificates that have different formats but important common uses. For example, different types of certificates, such as X.509 and PGP, share general certificate functionality (like encoding and verifying) and some types of information (like a public key).

X.509, PGP, and SDSI certificates can all be implemented by subclassing the Certificate class, even though they contain different sets of information, and they store and retrieve the information in different ways.

Note: The classes in the package javax.security.cert exist for compatibility with earlier versions of the Java Secure Sockets Extension (JSSE). New applications should instead use the standard Java SE certificate classes located in java.security.cert.

See Also

• X509Certificate

Public Constructor Summary

Certificate()

Public Method Summary

boolean	equals(Object other) Compares this certificate for equality with the specified object.
abstract byte[]	getEncoded() Returns the encoded form of this certificate.
abstract PublicKey	getPublicKey() Gets the public key from this certificate.
int	hashCode() Returns a hashcode value for this certificate from its encoded form.
abstract String	toString() Returns a string representation of this certificate.
abstract void	verify(PublicKey key, String sigProvider) Verifies that this certificate was signed using the private key that corresponds to the specified public key.
abstract void	verify(PublicKey key) Verifies that this certificate was signed using the private key that corresponds to the specified public key.

Inherited Method Summary

From class java.lang.Object

Object	clone() Creates and returns a copy of this Object.
boolean	equals(Object obj) Compares this instance with the specified object and indicates if they are equal.
void	finalize() Invoked when the garbage collector has detected that this instance is no longer reachable.
final Class<?>	getClass() Returns the unique instance of Class that represents this object's class.
int	hashCode() Returns an integer hash code for this object.
final void	notify() Causes a thread which is waiting on this object's monitor (by means of calling one of the wait() methods) to be woken up.
final void	notifyAll() Causes all threads which are waiting on this object's monitor (by means of calling one of the wait() methods) to be woken up.
String	toString() Returns a string containing a concise, human-readable description of this object.
final void	wait(long timeout, int nanos) Causes the calling thread to wait until another thread calls the notify() or notifyAll() method of this object or until the specified timeout expires.
final void	wait(long timeout) Causes the calling thread to wait until another thread calls the notify() or notifyAll() method of this object or until the specified timeout expires.
final void	wait() Causes the calling thread to wait until another thread calls the notify() or notifyAll() method of this object.

Public Constructors

public Certificate ()

Public Methods

public boolean equals (Object other)

Compares this certificate for equality with the specified object. If the other object is an instanceof Certificate, then its encoded form is retrieved and compared with the encoded form of this certificate.

Parameters

other	the object to test for equality with this certificate.

Returns

• true if the encoded forms of the two certificates match, false otherwise.

public abstract byte[] getEncoded ()

Returns the encoded form of this certificate. It is assumed that each certificate type would have only a single form of encoding; for example, X.509 certificates would be encoded as ASN.1 DER.

Returns

• encoded form of this certificate

Throws

CertificateEncodingException	on internal certificate encoding failure

public abstract PublicKey getPublicKey ()

Gets the public key from this certificate.

Returns

• the public key.

public int hashCode ()

Returns a hashcode value for this certificate from its encoded form.

Returns

• the hashcode value.

public abstract String toString ()

Returns a string representation of this certificate.

Returns

• a string representation of this certificate.

public abstract void verify (PublicKey key, String sigProvider)

Verifies that this certificate was signed using the private key that corresponds to the specified public key. This method uses the signature verification engine supplied by the specified provider.

Parameters

key	the PublicKey used to carry out the verification.
sigProvider	the name of the signature provider.

Throws

NoSuchAlgorithmException	on unsupported signature algorithms.
InvalidKeyException	on incorrect key.
NoSuchProviderException	on incorrect provider.
SignatureException	on signature errors.
CertificateException	on encoding errors.

public abstract void verify (PublicKey key)

Verifies that this certificate was signed using the private key that corresponds to the specified public key.

Parameters

key	the PublicKey used to carry out the verification.

Throws

NoSuchAlgorithmException	on unsupported signature algorithms.
InvalidKeyException	on incorrect key.
NoSuchProviderException	if there's no default provider.
SignatureException	on signature errors.
CertificateException	on encoding errors.