More in depth in NCryptoki

Modified on 2011/06/01 20:53 by Administrator Categorized as Uncategorized
As we said in [Introduction-to-PKCS-11-specifications|Introduction to PKCS#11 specifications], the API is defined in C language and the PKCS#11 
modules are implemented in C as native unmanaged libraries. In order to 
use it in a .NET application we have no chance to avoid from using 
platform invoke services (''P-Invoke''),&nbsp; supplied by the .NET 
framework, to import the unmanaged functions of the native API in our C#
 and/or VB.NET managed code. But importing such functions from an 
unmanaged dll, expecially from a highly complex PKCS#11 dll, requires 
very advanced skills in C/C++ and .NET and compels a lot of tedious work
 to write the declaration of the prototypes related to the functions 
using the P-Invoke rules and to deal with the marshalling of custom 
parameters.

	NCryptoki library allows to avoid from dealing with P-Invoke declarations and unmanaged code saving a lot of tedious work.

===NCryptoki===
NCryptoki is a library for .NET framework that implements the PKCS#11 
specifications and supplies an API for C#, VB.NET, Visual Basic 6, 
Delphi and other COM interop languages for integrating a PKCS#11 
compliant token in any application.

	NCryptoki maps the cryptoki's functions defined in PKCS#11 
specification in a set of high level classes usable in C#, VB.NET and 
propose a programming paradigm that allows to integrate your PKCS#11 
compliant token in your applications easily with a few lines of code.

	NCryptoki supplies also a ''COM interface'' that allows to use the supplied classes in any language that supports COM interop like Visual Basic 6, Delphi etc.

NCryptoki is composed by two dlls: 
# NCryptoki.dll that implements the .NET class hierarchy explained below
# NCryptkiMngd.dll that implements the C++ Managed layer between the PKCS#11 native library and the .NET classes.

The programming paradigm is very similar to the one described in C programming language in PKCS#11 specifications: &nbsp;the PKCS#11 C functions are mapped into a set of .NET classes that follows the same classification described above.

Figure 1 at right shows the class hierarchy of NCryptoki.

<table class="imageauto" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td><img class="image" src="http://www.ncryptoki.com/Data/Sites/1/userfiles/ncryptoki.png" alt="Image"><p class="imagedescription">Figure 1</td></tr></tbody></table>


	''Cryptoki''is the main class that allows to use the library, the classes ''Slot'' and ''Token'' enclose the slot-handling and token-handling functions, while the class ''CryptokiObject''
 encapsulates the object-handling functions as well as the definitions 
related to objects’ classes and their attributes. The class ''Session'' includes the ''OpenSession'' and ''CloseSession''
 functions, the functions related to login and logout, the search 
functions to search for PKCS#11 objects and, finally, the cryptographic 
and hashing functions and the other functions defined in the PKCS#11 
specifications
Meta Keywords: NCryptoki, Class Diagram, API
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More in depth in NCryptoki
