Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

Name

X509KeyManager

Synopsis

This interface is a KeyManager for working with X.509 certificates. An X509KeyManager is used during the SSL handshake by a peer that authenticates itself by providing an X.509 certificate chain to the remote host. This is usually done on the server side of the SSL connection, and can be done on the client-side as well, although that is uncommon. Obtain an X509KeyManager object either by implementing your own or from a KeyManagerFactory created with an algorithm of “SunX509”. Applications do not call the methods of an X509KeyManager themselves. Instead, they simply supply an appropriate X509KeyManager object to the SSLContext object that is responsible for setting up SSL connections. When the system needs to authenticate itself during an SSL handshake, it calls various methods of the key manager object to obtain the information in needs.

An X509KeyManager retrieves keys and certificae chains from the KeyStore object that was passed to the init( ) method of the KeyManagerFactory object from which it was created. getPrivateKey( ) and getCertificateChain( ) return the private key and the certificate chain for a specified alias. The other methods are called to list all aliases in the keystore or to choose one alias from the keystore that matches the specified keytype and certificate authority criteria. In this way, a X509KeyManager can choose a certificate chain (and it corresponding key) based on the types of keys and the list of certificate authorities recognized ...