Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

Name

Provider

Synopsis

This class represents a security provider. It specifies class names for implementations of one or more algorithms for message digests, digital signatures, key generation, key conversion, key management, secure random number generation, certificate conversion, and algorithm parameter management. The getName( ), getVersion( ), and getInfo( ) methods return information about the provider. Provider inherits from Properties and maintains a mapping of property names to property values. These name/value pairs specify the capabilities of the Provider implementation. Each property name has the form:

                  service_type.algorithm_name
               

The corresponding property value is the name of the class that implements the named algorithm. For example, say a Provider defines properties named “Signature.DSA”, “MessageDigest.MD5”, and “KeyStore.JKS”. The values of these properties are the class names of SignatureSpi, MessageDigestSpi, and KeyStoreSpi implementations. Other properties defined by a Provider are used to provide aliases for algorithm names. For example, the property Alg.Alias.MessageDigest.SHA1 might have the value “SHA”, meaning that the algorithm name “SHA1” is an alias for “SHA”.

In Java 5.0, the individual services provided by a Provider are described by the nested Service class, and various methods for querying and setting the Service objects of a Provider are available.

Security providers are installed in an implementation-dependent way. For Sun’s implementation, the ...