Parsing subject/issuer strings in X.509

[Philip Prindeville]

> On Jul 23, 2021, at 8:52 AM, Viktor Dukhovni <openssl-users at dukhovni.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 23 Jul 2021, at 2:57 am, David von Oheimb <dev at ddvo.net> wrote:
>> 
>> What I use is
>> 
>>        X509_NAME *nname = parse_name(string, MBSTRING_ASC, 1, desc);
>> 
>> which is not an official API function but defined in apps/lib/apps.c:
>> 
>> /*
>> * name is expected to be in the format /type0=value0/type1=value1/type2=...
>> * where + can be used instead of / to form multi-valued RDNs if canmulti
>> * and characters may be escaped by \
>> */
>> X509_NAME *parse_name(const char *cp, int chtype, int canmulti, const char *desc)
>> 
>> Would be good to have such a function as part of the X.509 API.
> 
> Note that the "/"-separated form is not the output format of the issuer or
> subject names in X509_NAME_oneline(3), x509(1), ...  So a public API for
> that format may not be a good idea.  Perhaps there could be parsers for
> the "rfc2253", "rfc2254" and "oneline" formats (or a single parser with
> flags to select the format).
> 
> -- 
> 	Viktor.
> 


And "rfc4514"... yeah, that would work too.

-Philip