passing cert location + password to a custom JSSESocketFactory

[Lewis Sellers]

I have a custom JSSESocketFactory class that can take a PKCS12
certificate and password and use it to talk through axis to a secure web
service. That works....

The problem is it needs to work on a shared hosting environment where
each customer will have thier own certificates, the certificate is used
used to verify their identity. I've been staring at the JSSE but am at
somewhat of a loss as how to pass the cert location/password TO the
class. :)

If anyone can shed a bit of light on this dilemia that would be helpful.

(There's apparently an attributes hashtable with the default
secureSocketFactory that for a moment I was hoping might be used for
this but... to be honest after staring at it a while I'm still somewhat
in the dark what it's purpose is.)

Thanks,
-lewis

[Janwillem Borleffs]

Lewis Sellers wrote:

I have a custom JSSESocketFactory class that can take a PKCS12
certificate and password and use it to talk through axis to a secure
web service. That works....

The problem is it needs to work on a shared hosting environment where
each customer will have thier own certificates, the certificate is
used used to verify their identity. I've been staring at the JSSE but
am at somewhat of a loss as how to pass the cert location/password TO
the class. :)

If anyone can shed a bit of light on this dilemia that would be
helpful.

You could use the -D option to pass the file location, per example:

java -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=/path/to/pkcs12file

But the most convenient way, IMO, would be to use a properties file, which
you can read with the java.util.Properties class:

import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;

import java.util.Properties;
....
FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream("/path/to/properties_file");
Properties properties = new Properties();
Properties properties.load(in);

The properties file can then be read to get the path to the pkcs12 file and
its password:

System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStore",
properties.getProperty("pkcs12file"));
System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword ",
properties.getProperty("pkcs12fpassword"));
System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStoreType", "pkcs12");

The properties file itself would look like this:

pkcs12file=/path/to/pkcs12file
pkcs12password=password
HTH;
JW