Extracting information from the certificate

Hi,

I am working on client authentication(in a sample JSP application) using certificates.
I have written a code to extract the client information from the client certificate. Now I wanted to use certificate's serial number to identify the particular use from the database.

I extracted the serial number using . It gives me an output 3. Is this a integer, BigInteger or an array value?

Is there any way I can declare this as an another integer variable for example int a = (serial number value)?? I have not played much with jsp so I do not know exactly where to have a code for that in my jsp file.

I would really appreciate if someone could help me. Thanks in advance. I am attaching my code which extracts the serial number from the certificate installed.
[My idea is to identify the particular clients based on the serial number on their ceritificates. if 1 then its X, if 2 then its Y - Is it possible?]

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@ page import="java.math.*" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
     <head>
          <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
          <title>Bell Book and CD Store</title>
     </head>
     <body>
          <%@page import="java.security.cert.X509Certificate"%>
          <center> <font color="red"> Welcome</font> </center>
          <%
              Object o = request.getAttribute("javax.servlet.request.X509Certificate");
              if (o != null) {
              X509Certificate certs[] = (X509Certificate[]) o;
              X509Certificate cert = certs[0];
          %>
          <%= cert.getSerialNumber() %>      
          <%
            }   
            else {
          %>
                You are not Authorized!
                 Your certificate cannot be found!
          <%
              }
           %>
        <form method = "post" action = "page2.jsp">
        <input type = submit value = "click me">
        </form>
</body>
</html>

Welcome to the CodeRanch!

First of all you don't write Java inside JSPs these days. Use Standard actions, JSTL, EL etc...

Is this a integer, BigInteger or an array value?

That's what return form X509Certificate.getSerialNumber() method.

My idea is to identify the particular clients based on the serial number on their ceritificates. if 1 then its X, if 2 then its Y - Is it possible?

Yes. You can use <c:if> tag from JSTL to do this. And you should avoid all the Java code in production (at least in new code).

As Vijitha said, the code surrounded by scriptlet should go on server side. for instance, it makes easier to debug.

Seetharaman Venkatasamy wrote:As Vijitha said, the code surrounded by scriptlet should go on server side. for instance, it makes easier to debug.

Code in a JSP is on the server side.

But yes, Java code in a JSP is reprehensible.

Thank you all for your reply.
Next time will try to work on my faults.
Thank you :)