(Java) How to Parse a X.509 Certificate and Extract its Public Key

Demonstrates how to load an X.509 certificate and extract the public key. Chilkat supports many certificate encodings:

• DER (binary) encoded certificates (.crt/.cer)
• PEM (BASE64) encoded certificates (.pem)
• Load Certificates Directly from Windows Certificate Stores
• PFX/PKCS12 (.pfx/.p12)
• Java KeyStore (.jks)
• Cryptographic Message Syntax Standard - PKCS #7 Certificates (.P7B)

Chilkat Java Downloads Java Libs for Windows, MacOS, Linux, Alpine Linux, Solaris Java Libs for Android

import com.chilkatsoft.*;

public class ChilkatExample {

  static {
    try {
        System.loadLibrary("chilkat");
    } catch (UnsatisfiedLinkError e) {
      System.err.println("Native code library failed to load.\n" + e);
      System.exit(1);
    }
  }

  public static void main(String argv[])
  {
    CkCert cert = new CkCert();

    // Load a DER (binary) encoded certificate.
    // To load from a .pem or .p7b, or any other file format that contains
    // just one certificate, call LoadFromFile in exactly the same way.
    // The LoadFromFile method automatically detects the format and loads the certificate.
    boolean success = cert.LoadFromFile("qa_data/certs/testCert.cer");
    if (success == false) {
        System.out.println(cert.lastErrorText());
        return;
        }

    // Get the public key:
    CkPublicKey pubKey = cert.ExportPublicKey();
    if (cert.get_LastMethodSuccess() != true) {
        System.out.println(cert.lastErrorText());
        return;
        }

    // Examine the key type.
    // A PublicKey object can contain an RSA, ECC, or DSA public key.
    // The KeyType property will contain "rsa", "ecc", or "dsa".
    System.out.println("key type = " + pubKey.keyType());
  }
}