2.3 KiB
PEM Decoder and Encoder
Often times DER-encoded data is wrapped in PEM encoding. This allows the binary DER data to be identified and reliably sent over various communication channels.
The asn1crypto.pem
module includes three functions:
detect(byte_string)
unarmor(pem_bytes, multiple=False)
armor(type_name, der_bytes, headers=None)
detect()
The detect()
function accepts a byte string and looks for a BEGIN
block
line. This is useful to determine in a byte string needs to be PEM-decoded
before parsing.
from asn1crypto import pem, x509
with open('/path/to/cert', 'rb') as f:
der_bytes = f.read()
if pem.detect(der_bytes):
_, _, der_bytes = pem.unarmor(der_bytes)
unarmor()
The unarmor()
function accepts a byte string and the flag to indicates if
more than one PEM block may be contained in the byte string. The result is
a three-element tuple.
- The first element is a unicode string of the type of PEM block. Examples
include:
CERTIFICATE
,PRIVATE KEY
,PUBLIC KEY
. - The second element is a
dict
of PEM block headers. Headers are typically only used by encrypted OpenSSL private keys, and are in the formatName: Value
. - The third element is a byte string of the decoded block contents.
from asn1crypto import pem, x509
with open('/path/to/cert', 'rb') as f:
der_bytes = f.read()
if pem.detect(der_bytes):
type_name, headers, der_bytes = pem.unarmor(der_bytes)
cert = x509.Certificate.load(der_bytes)
If the multiple
keyword argument is set to True
, a generator will be
returned.
from asn1crypto import pem, x509
certs = []
with open('/path/to/ca_certs', 'rb') as f:
for type_name, headers, der_bytes in pem.unarmor(f.read(), multiple=True):
certs.append(x509.Certificate.load(der_bytes))
armor()
The armor()
function accepts three parameters: a unicode string of the block
type name, a byte string to encode and an optional keyword argument headers
,
that should be a dict
of headers to add after the BEGIN
line. Headers are
typically only used by encrypted OpenSSL private keys.
from asn1crypto import pem, x509
# cert is an instance of x509.Certificate
with open('/path/to/cert', 'wb') as f:
der_bytes = cert.dump()
pem_bytes = pem.armor('CERTIFICATE', der_bytes)
f.write(pem_bytes)