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Introduction

This document describes the Keychain Manager for Carbon and Classic applications. It explains how you can write applications that create, store, and manage passwords and other secure data.

The Keychain Manager provides a uniform way to handle passwords for multiple users, multiple databases, or any situation in which a user must enter single or multiple passwords. You can use the Keychain Manager to provide secure storage for a user's passwords, cryptographic keys, and digital certificates.

This document describes the Keychain Manager in the following sections:

  • provides a conceptual overview of the Keychain Manager.
  • provides an introduction to programming the Keychain Manager.
  • "Keychain Manager Reference" (page 37) provides a complete description of the Keychain Manager 2.0 API, including its functions, data types, constants, and result codes.
  • provides a history of changes to this document.
  • All code listings in this document are shown in C, except for listings that describe resources, which are shown in Rez-input format. Many listings are taken from the MenuScripter sample application, which is available through Apple's developer website at http://developer.apple.com/.

    Although the sample code in this document has been compiled and tested to some degree, Apple Computer does not recommend that you directly incorporate this code into your application. For example, only limited error handling is shown--you should develop your own techniques for detecting and handling errors.

    Keychain Manager Concepts

    Keychain Manager Tasks

    Document Revision History


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