Is there an easier way to sign an XML document in Java?

Question

I'm trying to digitally sign an XML document using Java. I've got an implementation working with some references I've found that use various implementations in the javax.xml.crypto.dsig package.

However, my current implementation is like many of the examples I've looked at - it's rather verbose and involves using no less than 23 different API classes from the java.xml.crypto.dsig, javax.xml.transform, and java.security packages, among others. It feels like I've entered factory factory factory land, and it took me several hours just to figure out what was going on.

My question is, is there an easier way to do this? If I've got public/private key files and I want to add a <Signature/> to an XML document, is there a library out there that just lets me call something like:

OutputStream signFile(InputStream xmlFile, File privateKey)

...without all of the XMLSignatureFactory/CanonicalizationMethod/DOMSignContext craziness?

I'm not very well-versed in cryptography, and the Java-provided API seems rather daunting for developers like myself trying to become familiar with digital signing. If all of this is necessary or there's currently no friendlier API out there, that's fine and I'm willing to accept that as an answer. I'd just like to know if I'm unnecessarily taking the hard road here.

Answer 1

Have look at Apache XML Security. To use the package to generate and verify a signature, checkout the samples in src_samples/org/apache/xml/security/samples/signature/.

Answer 2

Building from the Apache Santuario CreateSignature example, the shortest thing I could come up with is this. Without the main() and its accompanying output(), it's 20 lines

import java.io.*;
import java.security.Key;
import java.security.KeyStore;
import java.security.cert.X509Certificate;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;

import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;
import org.apache.xml.security.Init;
import org.apache.xml.security.c14n.Canonicalizer;
import org.apache.xml.security.signature.XMLSignature;
import org.apache.xml.security.transforms.Transforms;
import org.apache.xml.security.utils.Constants;
import org.apache.xml.security.utils.ElementProxy;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;

public class CreateSignature {

    private static final String PRIVATE_KEY_ALIAS = "test-alias";
    private static final String PRIVATE_KEY_PASS = "test";
    private static final String KEY_STORE_PASS = "test";
    private static final String KEY_STORE_TYPE = "JKS";

    public static void main(String... unused) throws Exception {
        final InputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream("test.xml");
        try {
            output(signFile(fileInputStream, new File("keystore.jks")), "signed-test.xml");
        }
        finally {
            IOUtils.closeQuietly(fileInputStream);
        }
    }

    public static ByteArrayOutputStream signFile(InputStream xmlFile, File privateKeyFile) throws Exception {
        final Document doc = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(xmlFile);
        Init.init();
        ElementProxy.setDefaultPrefix(Constants.SignatureSpecNS, "");
        final KeyStore keyStore = loadKeyStore(privateKeyFile);
        final XMLSignature sig = new XMLSignature(doc, null, XMLSignature.ALGO_ID_SIGNATURE_RSA);
        final Transforms transforms = new Transforms(doc);
        transforms.addTransform(Transforms.TRANSFORM_ENVELOPED_SIGNATURE);
        sig.addDocument("", transforms, Constants.ALGO_ID_DIGEST_SHA1);
        final Key privateKey = keyStore.getKey(PRIVATE_KEY_ALIAS, PRIVATE_KEY_PASS.toCharArray());
        final X509Certificate cert = (X509Certificate)keyStore.getCertificate(PRIVATE_KEY_ALIAS);
        sig.addKeyInfo(cert);
        sig.addKeyInfo(cert.getPublicKey());
        sig.sign(privateKey);
        doc.getDocumentElement().appendChild(sig.getElement());
        final ByteArrayOutputStream outputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        outputStream.write(Canonicalizer.getInstance(Canonicalizer.ALGO_ID_C14N_WITH_COMMENTS).canonicalizeSubtree(doc));
        return outputStream;
    }

    private static KeyStore loadKeyStore(File privateKeyFile) throws Exception {
        final InputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream(privateKeyFile);
        try {
            final KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance(KEY_STORE_TYPE);
            keyStore.load(fileInputStream, KEY_STORE_PASS.toCharArray());
            return keyStore;
        }
        finally {
            IOUtils.closeQuietly(fileInputStream);
        }
    }

    private static void output(ByteArrayOutputStream signedOutputStream, String fileName) throws IOException {
        final OutputStream fileOutputStream = new FileOutputStream(fileName);
        try {
            fileOutputStream.write(signedOutputStream.toByteArray());
            fileOutputStream.flush();
        }
        finally {
            IOUtils.closeQuietly(fileOutputStream);
        }
    }
}