Reading/Writing JSON Web Keys (JWK) in R

In jose: JavaScript Object Signing and Encryption

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
knitr::opts_chunk$set(comment = "")

RSA / ECDSA keys

JSON Web Keys (JWK) is a format specified in RFC7517 for storing RSA/EC/AES keys in a JSON based format. It can be used to import/export such keys in the browser using the new W3C WebCryptoAPI.

The jose package makes it easy to read/write such keys in R for use with JWT or any other functionality from the openssl package.

library(openssl)
library(jose)

# Generate a ECDSA key
key <- openssl::ec_keygen()
jsonlite::prettify(write_jwk(key))

# Use public key
pubkey <- as.list(key)$pubkey
json <- write_jwk(pubkey)
jsonlite::prettify(json)

# Read JWK key
(out <- read_jwk(json))
identical(pubkey, out)

AES/HMAC keys

JWT also specifies a format for encoding AES/HMAC secrets. Such secret keys are simply raw bytes.

# Random secret
(key <- rand_bytes(16))
(jwk <- write_jwk(key))
read_jwk(jwk)

jose documentation built on Oct. 4, 2024, 5:11 p.m.