/*
* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
* contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
* this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
* The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
* (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
* the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.
*/
package java.security;
import java.io.Serializable;
/**
* {@code Key} is the common interface for all keys.
*
* @see PublicKey
* @see PrivateKey
*/
public interface Key extends Serializable {
/**
* The {@code serialVersionUID} to be compatible with JDK1.1.
*/
public static final long serialVersionUID = 6603384152749567654L;
/**
* Returns the name of the algorithm of this key. If the algorithm is
* unknown, {@code null} is returned.
*
* @return the name of the algorithm of this key or {@code null} if the
* algorithm is unknown.
*/
public String getAlgorithm();
/**
* Returns the name of the format used to encode this key, or {@code null}
* if it can not be encoded.
*
* @return the name of the format used to encode this key, or {@code null}
* if it can not be encoded.
*/
public String getFormat();
/**
* Returns the encoded form of this key, or {@code null} if encoding is not
* supported by this key.
*
* @return the encoded form of this key, or {@code null} if encoding is not
* supported by this key.
*/
public byte[] getEncoded();
}