Using an SSLContext to create a SocketChannel

Question

I'm looking to implement NIO for a SSL socket. However, every example that I've found, uses SocketChannel.open() to get the socket channel.

From a SSLContext, how can I get a SocketChannel?

Got it working with Netty. – judepereira Apr 12 '15 at 10:26 — judepereira, Apr 12 '15 at 10:26

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 12 '15 at 06:54

0

You can't. The question doesn't make sense. SocketChannels are plaintext. SSLContexts are for SSL.

answered Apr 12 '15 at 06:54

user207421

305,947
44
307
483

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 12 '15 at 07:19

0

This is unfortunately not very easy. You can't directly create a SocketChannel that automatically uses SSL from an SSLContext.

From the SSLContext, you can create an SSLEngine, and you'll have to call it appropriately to handle the SSL handshake. This isn't a matter of a few lines of code.

I have an sslclient example on GitHub with a class SSLSocketChannel which shows how to do this.

answered Apr 12 '15 at 07:19

Jesper

202,709
46
318
350

I decided to go for Netty :) Got it working with client side auth too :) – judepereira Apr 12 '15 at 10:26

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 21 '17 at 19:16

Sadly, that is impossible to do with the standard Java library.

SSL/TLS is implemented in Java using SSLEngine, but that class is seriously hard to use correctly.

But there are options. TLS Channel is a simple library that does exactly that: wrapping a SSLContext (or SSLEngine) and exposing a ByteChannel interface, doing the heavy lifting internally.

(Disclaimer: I am the library's main author).

Using an SSLContext to create a SocketChannel

3 Answers3