# ssl API Users Guide

Fred Romelfanger (fred@stsci.edu)
Sat, 31 Oct 1998 23:15:54 -0500

- Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
- Next message: David Brownell: "Re: ssl API Users Guide"
- Previous message: Jan Luehe: "Re: Need PKCS12 provider package."
- Next in thread: David Brownell: "Re: ssl API Users Guide"

I was looking at the early access ssl API Users guide and found the
following:

--------

HTTPS URL Handler

The java.net.URL class supports, without any modification, the
https://host/object style URL. This represents one of the most common
APIs to SSL
on the client side; it layers the HTTP protocol over SSL. In many
environments, firewalls support tunneling of HTTPS through corporate
firewalls to
Internet web servers such as those for banks and brokerages, providing a
richer programming model than that which is available to socket level
programmers.

A common way to use such URLs is to use HTTP's POST method to send a
request to a remote object, for which a response is returned. This can be
viewed as an easily used "object oriented RPC", secured using SSL's
privacy and authentication features.

----

java.net.URL does not support the https protocol without modification.

Netscape, IE, and HotJava do provide an https protocol handler, but
the jdk and java plugin do not. If you try to use https with with
jdk or the java plugin, you get the error message:

java.net.MalformedURLException: unknown protocol: https

It would be nice if this did work in all java implementations.

I have successfully used the files supplied with HotJava to make an
https connection via the JDK, but requires a native shared library, and
would complicate distribution for the java plugin. If the problem is
export concerns with the jdk and java plugin, it would be nice if Sun
would supply an https handler with either an implementation of the SSL
API or JCE that could be used by the JDK or java plugin and could be
download seperately.

- Next message: David Brownell: "Re: ssl API Users Guide"
- Previous message: Jan Luehe: "Re: Need PKCS12 provider package."
- Next in thread: David Brownell: "Re: ssl API Users Guide"