Using certificate with nuSOAP and cURL 1

[miraclemaker]

Hi I'm using cURL with nuSOAP. I'm requesting a service from a website that requires me to supply a certificate to authenticate myself. I've got two certificates - a .pfx file and a .p7b file. I've installed these on my server but I still can't do any requests. Do I need to specify to cURL to use a certificate when it performs the request?

If so can someone explain how to do this?

Thank a lot.

 

[sleipnir214]

It involves judicious use of the curl_setopt() function.

I've never done client-side certificates with cURL, but I believe that you invoke:

[tt]curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSLCERT, $certfile);[/tt]

where $certfile contains the name of the file containing the certificate.

If your certificate file requires a password, invoke:

[tt]curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSLCERTPASSWD, $certpassword);[/tt]


One gotcha: cURL can only use PEM and DER-formatted certificate files. cURL defaults to PEM, to specify DER, invoke:

[tt]curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSLCERTTYPE, "DER");[/tt]

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[miraclemaker]

Thnaks for that. I have two certificates; a .p7b file and a .pfx file. Is there a way to convert these to the required format?

I'm using nuSOAP on windows - where do I need to store the certificates so that they are available to cURL?

Thanks.

 

[sleipnir214]

p7b" is a file extension used by Microsoft -- it follows the PKCS#7 format.

openssl should be able to convert the file:

openssl pkcs7 -inform DER -in <yourfilenamehere>.p7b -print_certs -text -out cert.pem

You can store the certs anywhere on the filesystem. You tell cURL to use the file using the curl_setopt() function I listed above.

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[miraclemaker]

Thanks for that. I found another resource that advised using openssl. I used the command:

openssl.exe pkcs12 –in test_b.pfx –out test_b.pem

- the p7b file contained three certificates that looked like cert authorities, so I used the other file that looked like it contained client certificates.

What is the difference between using pkcs7 and pkcs12?

 

[sleipnir214]

I have no idea.

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[miraclemaker]

No worries, thanks again.

 

[miraclemaker]

Another question - if I want to create a CA bundle of more than one certificate in a PEM file, what structure should it take?

Is it ok to have
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
...
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

multiple times in one .pem file?

 

[sleipnir214]

Yes. A PEM file can have multiple certificates, one following another.

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