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Keychain Manager Tasks

This chapter describes how you can create a keychain application of your own, using the routines supplied by the Keychain Manager and your own application-supplied functions. The Keychain Manager provides you with a programming interface for creating and displaying dialog boxes that allow a user to set up, access the keychain, and supply and modify passwords.

The Keychain Manager provides functions and data structures that allow you to store your passwords on the keychain and retrieve them. It exposes high-level routines to provide developers with easy access to the encrypted data store, and low-level routines necessary for more controlled access.

Your application can use the Keychain Manager to

  • display a dialog box requesting the user's password to lock or unlock a keychain
  • create an empty keychain
  • get information about a keychain
  • search for keychain items
  • add, delete, update, or copy keychain item in a keychain
  • provide a notification callback function to handle keychain events
  • set and obtain the default keychain
  • store and retrieve AppleShare, Internet, and generic passwords
  • The following sections provide an introduction to programming the Keychain Manager:

    Getting Information About the Keychain Manager

    Managing Keychains

    Working With the Default Keychain

    Locking and Unlocking Keychains

    Storing and Retrieving Passwords

    Manipulating Passwords

    Setting and Obtaining Keychain Item Data

    Managing User Interaction

    Responding to Keychain Events


    © 2000 Apple Computer, Inc. (Last Updated 20 July 2000)