JavaTM 2 Platform
Std. Ed. v1.4.2

javax.crypto
Interface SecretKey

All Superinterfaces:
Key, Serializable
All Known Subinterfaces:
PBEKey
All Known Implementing Classes:
KerberosKey, SecretKeySpec

public interface SecretKey
extends Key

A secret (symmetric) key.

This interface contains no methods or constants. Its only purpose is to group (and provide type safety for) secret keys.

Provider implementations of this interface must overwrite the equals and hashCode methods inherited from java.lang.Object, so that secret keys are compared based on their underlying key material and not based on reference.

Keys that implement this interface return the string RAW as their encoding format (see getFormat), and return the raw key bytes as the result of a getEncoded method call. (The getFormat and getEncoded methods are inherited from the java.security.Key parent interface.)

Since:
1.4
See Also:
SecretKeyFactory, Cipher

Field Summary
 
Fields inherited from interface java.security.Key
serialVersionUID
 
Methods inherited from interface java.security.Key
getAlgorithm, getEncoded, getFormat
 


JavaTM 2 Platform
Std. Ed. v1.4.2

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For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java 2 SDK SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

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