Getting HTTPS SSL certificates from HttpRequest in Java

Such an easy solution:

java.security.cert.X509Certificate cert[] =
(java.security.cert.X509Certificate[]) httpServletRequest.getAttribute
("javax.servlet.request.X509Certificate");


The result is the whole certificate chain.

The client could or could not send its certificate. A client certificate can be send in SSL version 3 and in TLS. You have to set an option to the web application server to want ant to accept client certificates. In jetty, the option is named wantClientAuth. Later I will extend the article with the name for Tomcat.