acme4j

A Java client for the Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol as specified in RFC 8555.

ACME is a protocol that a certificate authority (CA) and an applicant can use to automate the process of verification and certificate issuance.

This Java client helps connecting to an ACME server, and performing all necessary steps to manage certificates.

It is an independent open source implementation that is not affiliated with or endorsed by Let's Encrypt.

The source code can be found at GitHub and is distributed under the terms of Apache License 2.0.

Latest version: maven central

Features

  • Mature and stable code base. First release was in December 2015!
  • Fully RFC 8555 compliant
  • Supports the http-01, dns-01, and tls-alpn-01 (RFC 8737) challenges
  • Supports RFC 8738 IP identifier validation
  • Supports RFC 8739 short-term automatic certificate renewal (experimental)
  • Supports RFC 8823 for S/MIME certificates (experimental)
  • Easy to use Java API
  • Requires JRE 8 (update 101) or higher. For building the project, Java 9 or higher is required.
  • Built with maven, packages available at Maven Central
  • Extensive unit and integration tests
  • Reported to work on Android. However, this platform is not officially supported.

Dependencies

Quick Start

There is an example source code included in this project. It gives an example of how to get a TLS certificate with acme4j.

Modules

acme4j consists of five modules. All modules are available at Maven Central and can easily be added to the dependency list of your project. You can also download the jar files at GitHub.

acme4j-client

acme4j-client is the main module. It contains everything that is required to get certificates for domains. It only requires jose4j and slf4j.

The Java module name is org.shredzone.acme4j.

acme4j-utils

acme4j-utils contains utility classes for creating key pairs, CSRs, and certificates. It requires Bouncy Castle though.

The Java module name is org.shredzone.acme4j.utils.

acme4j-smime

acme4j-smime contains the RFC 8823 implementation for ordering S/MIME certificates. It requires Bouncy Castle and a javax.mail implementation.

The Java module name is org.shredzone.acme4j.smime.

acme4j-example
This module only contains an example code that demonstrates how to get a certificate with acme4j. It depends on acme4j-client and acme4j-utils. It is not useful as a dependency in other projects.
acme4j-it

acme4j-it mainly serves as integration test suite for acme4j itself. It is not really useful as a dependency in other projects. However if you write own integration tests using pebble and pebble-challtestsrv, you may find the challtestsrv configuration client useful in your project.

The Java module name is org.shredzone.acme4j.it.

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License

acme4j is open source software. The source code is distributed under the terms of Apache License 2.0.