Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

Name

CertificateFactory

Synopsis

This class defines methods for parsing certificates, certificate chains (certification paths) and certificate revocation lists (CRLs) from byte streams. Obtain a CertificateFactory by calling one of the static getInstance( ) factory methods and specifying the type of certificate or CRL to be parsed, and, optionally, the desired service provider to perform the parsing. The default “SUN” provider defines only a single “X.509” certificate type, so you typically obtain a CertificateFactory with this code:

CertificateFactory certFactory = CertificateFactory.getInstance("X.509");

Once you have obtained a CertificateFactory for the desired type of certificate, call generateCertificate( ) to parse a Certificate from a specified byte stream, or call generateCertificates( ) to parse a group of unrelated certificates (i.e. certificates that do not form a certificate chain) from a stream and return them as a Collection of Certificate objects. Similarly, call generateCRL( ) to parse a single CRL object from a stream, and call generateCRLs( ) to parse a Collection of CRL objects from the stream. These CertificateFactory methods read to the end of the specified stream. If the stream supports mark( ) and reset( ), however, the CertificateFactory resets the stream to the position after the end of the last certificate or CRL read. If you specified a certificate type of “X.509”, the Certificate and CRL objects returned by a CertificateFactory can be cast safely ...