Mutual Authentication with x509 Certificates using HttpClient 4.0.1

Question

Does anyone have any friendly tips on how to perform client authentication via an x509 certificate using HTTPClient 4.0.1?

Answer 1

I used the following from a sample code on HttpClient's website (custom SSL context if I remember correctly).

{
    KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance("PKCS12"); //client certificate holder
    FileInputStream instream = new FileInputStream(new File(
            "client-p12-keystore.p12"));
    try {
        trustStore.load(instream, "password".toCharArray());
    } finally {
        instream.close();
    }

    // Trust own CA and all self-signed certs
    SSLContext sslcontext = SSLContexts.custom()
            .loadKeyMaterial(keyStore, "password".toCharArray())
            // .loadTrustMaterial(trustStore, new TrustSelfSignedStrategy()) //if you have a trust store
            .build();
    // Allow TLSv1 protocol only
    SSLConnectionSocketFactory sslsf = new SSLConnectionSocketFactory(
            sslcontext, new String[] { "TLSv1" }, null,
            SSLConnectionSocketFactory.ALLOW_ALL_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER);
    CloseableHttpClient httpclient = HttpClients
            .custom()
            .setHostnameVerifier(
                    SSLConnectionSocketFactory.ALLOW_ALL_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER) //todo
            .setSSLSocketFactory(sslsf).build();
    try {

        HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("https://localhost:8443/secure/index");

        System.out.println("executing request" + httpget.getRequestLine());

        CloseableHttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
        try {
            HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();

            System.out.println("----------------------------------------");
            System.out.println(response.getStatusLine());
            if (entity != null) {
                System.out.println("Response content length: "
                        + entity.getContentLength());
            }
            EntityUtils.consume(entity);
        } finally {
            response.close();
        }
    } finally {
        httpclient.close();
    }
}