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Class java.security.cert.Certificate

java.lang.Object
    |
    +----java.security.cert.Certificate
Subclasses:
X509Certificate

public abstract class Certificate
extends Object

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.

See Also:
X509Certificate

Constructor Summary
 Certificate()
 
 

Method Summary
boolean  equals(Object other)
Compares this certificate for equality with the specified object.
byte[]  getEncoded()
Returns the encoded form of this certificate.
PublicKey  getPublicKey()
Gets the public key from this certificate.
int  hashCode()
Returns a hashcode value for this certificate from its encoded form.
String  toString()
Returns a string representation of this certificate.
void  verify(PublicKey key)
Verifies that this certificate was signed using the private key that corresponds to the specified public key.
void  verify(PublicKey key, String sigProvider)
Verifies that this certificate was signed using the private key that corresponds to the specified public key.
 
Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object
 clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait
 

Constructor Detail

Certificate

public Certificate()
Method Detail

equals

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 iff the encoded forms of the two certificates match, false otherwise.
Overrides:
equals in class Object

hashCode

public int hashCode()
Returns a hashcode value for this certificate from its encoded form.
Returns:
the hashcode value.
Overrides:
hashCode in class Object

getEncoded

public abstract byte[] getEncoded() throws CertificateEncodingException
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.
Throws:
CertificateEncodingException - if an encoding error occurs.

verify

public abstract void verify(PublicKey key) throws CertificateException, NoSuchAlgorithmException, InvalidKeyException, NoSuchProviderException, SignatureException
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.

verify

public abstract void verify(PublicKey key,
                            String sigProvider) throws CertificateException, NoSuchAlgorithmException, InvalidKeyException, NoSuchProviderException, SignatureException
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.

toString

public abstract String toString()
Returns a string representation of this certificate.
Returns:
a string representation of this certificate.
Overrides:
toString in class Object

getPublicKey

public abstract PublicKey getPublicKey()
Gets the public key from this certificate.
Returns:
the public key.

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