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7.6.5.1 Encrypting a Plaintext

Function: gpgme_error_t gpgme_op_encrypt (gpgme_ctx_t ctx, gpgme_key_t recp[], gpgme_encrypt_flags_t flags, gpgme_data_t plain, gpgme_data_t cipher)

The function gpgme_op_encrypt encrypts the plaintext in the data object plain for the recipients recp and stores the ciphertext in the data object cipher. The type of the ciphertext created is determined by the ASCII armor (or, if that is not set, by the encoding specified for cipher) and the text mode attributes set for the context ctx.

recp must be a NULL-terminated array of keys. The user must keep references for all keys during the whole duration of the call (but see gpgme_op_encrypt_start for the requirements with the asynchronous variant).

The value in flags is a bitwise-or combination of one or multiple of the following bit values:

GPGME_ENCRYPT_ALWAYS_TRUST

The GPGME_ENCRYPT_ALWAYS_TRUST symbol specifies that all the recipients in recp should be trusted, even if the keys do not have a high enough validity in the keyring. This flag should be used with care; in general it is not a good idea to use any untrusted keys.

GPGME_ENCRYPT_NO_ENCRYPT_TO

SINCE: 1.2.0

The GPGME_ENCRYPT_NO_ENCRYPT_TO symbol specifies that no default or hidden default recipients as configured in the crypto backend should be included. This can be useful for managing different user profiles.

GPGME_ENCRYPT_NO_COMPRESS

SINCE: 1.5.0

The GPGME_ENCRYPT_NO_COMPRESS symbol specifies that the plaintext shall not be compressed before it is encrypted. This is in some cases useful if the length of the encrypted message may reveal information about the plaintext.

GPGME_ENCRYPT_PREPARE
GPGME_ENCRYPT_EXPECT_SIGN

The GPGME_ENCRYPT_PREPARE symbol is used with the UI Server protocol to prepare an encryption (i.e. sending the PREP_ENCRYPT command). With the GPGME_ENCRYPT_EXPECT_SIGN symbol the UI Server is advised to also expect a sign command.

GPGME_ENCRYPT_SYMMETRIC

SINCE: 1.7.0

The GPGME_ENCRYPT_SYMMETRIC symbol specifies that the output should be additionally encrypted symmetrically even if recipients are provided. This feature is only supported for the OpenPGP crypto engine.

GPGME_ENCRYPT_THROW_KEYIDS

SINCE: 1.8.0

The GPGME_ENCRYPT_THROW_KEYIDS symbols requests that the identifiers for the decrption keys are not included in the ciphertext. On the receiving side, the use of this flag may slow down the decryption process because all available secret keys must be tried. This flag is only honored for OpenPGP encryption.

GPGME_ENCRYPT_WRAP

SINCE: 1.8.0

The GPGME_ENCRYPT_WRAP symbol specifies that the input is an OpenPGP message and not a plain data. This is the counterpart to GPGME_DECRYPT_UNWRAP.

GPGME_ENCRYPT_WANT_ADDRESS

SINCE: 1.11.0

The GPGME_ENCRYPT_WANT_ADDRESS symbol requests that all supplied keys or key specifications include a syntactically valid mail address. If this is not the case the operation is not even tried and the error code GPG_ERR_INV_USER_ID is returned. Only the address part of the key specification is conveyed to the backend. As of now the key must be specified using the recpstring argument of the extended encrypt functions. This feature is currently only supported for the OpenPGP crypto engine.

If GPG_ERR_UNUSABLE_PUBKEY is returned, some recipients in recp are invalid, but not all. In this case the plaintext might be encrypted for all valid recipients and returned in cipher (if this happens depends on the crypto engine). More information about the invalid recipients is available with gpgme_op_encrypt_result.

If recp is NULL, symmetric rather than public key encryption is performed. Symmetrically encrypted cipher text can be deciphered with gpgme_op_decrypt. Note that in this case the crypto backend needs to retrieve a passphrase from the user. Symmetric encryption is currently only supported for the OpenPGP crypto backend.

The function returns the error code GPG_ERR_NO_ERROR if the ciphertext could be created successfully, GPG_ERR_INV_VALUE if ctx, recp, plain or cipher is not a valid pointer, GPG_ERR_UNUSABLE_PUBKEY if recp contains some invalid recipients, GPG_ERR_BAD_PASSPHRASE if the passphrase for the symmetric key could not be retrieved, and passes through any errors that are reported by the crypto engine support routines.

Function: gpgme_error_t gpgme_op_encrypt_start (gpgme_ctx_t ctx, gpgme_key_t recp[], gpgme_encrypt_flags_t flags, gpgme_data_t plain, gpgme_data_t cipher)

The function gpgme_op_encrypt_start initiates a gpgme_op_encrypt operation. It can be completed by calling gpgme_wait on the context. See Waiting For Completion.

References to the keys only need to be held for the duration of this call. The user can release its references to the keys after this function returns, even if the operation is not yet finished.

The function returns the error code GPG_ERR_NO_ERROR if the operation could be started successfully, GPG_ERR_INV_VALUE if ctx, rset, plain or cipher is not a valid pointer, and GPG_ERR_UNUSABLE_PUBKEY if rset does not contain any valid recipients.

Function: gpgme_error_t gpgme_op_encrypt_ext (gpgme_ctx_t ctx, gpgme_key_t recp[], const char *recpstring, gpgme_encrypt_flags_t flags, gpgme_data_t plain, gpgme_data_t cipher)

SINCE: 1.11.0

This is an extended version of gpgme_op_encrypt with recpstring as additional parameter. If recp is NULL and recpstring is not NULL, the latter is expected to be a linefeed delimited string with the set of key specifications. In contrast to recp the keys are given directly as strings and there is no need to first create key objects. Leading and trailing white space is remove from each line in recpstring. The keys are then passed verbatim to the backend engine.

For the OpenPGP backend several special keywords are supported to modify the operation. These keywords are given instead of a key specification. The currently supported keywords are:

--hidden
--no-hidden

These keywords toggle between normal and hidden recipients for all following key specifications. When a hidden recipient is requested the gpg option -R (or -F in file mode) is used instead of -r (-f in file mode).

--file
--no-file

These keywords toggle between regular and file mode for all following key specification. In file mode the option -f or -F is passed to gpg. At least GnuPG version 2.1.14 is required to handle these options. The GPGME_ENCRYPT_WANT_ADDRESS flag is ignored in file mode.

--

This keyword disables all keyword detection up to the end of the string. All keywords are treated as verbatim arguments.

To create a recpstring it is often useful to employ a strconcat style function. For example this function creates a string to encrypt to two keys:

char *
xbuild_recpstring (const char *key1, const char *key2)
{
  char *result = gpgrt_strconcat ("--\n", key1, "\n", key2, NULL);
  if (!result)
    { perror ("strconcat failed"); exit (2); }
  return result;
}

Note the use of the double dash here; unless you want to specify a keyword, it is a good idea to avoid any possible trouble with key specifications starting with a double dash. The used strconcat function is available in Libgpg-error 1.28 and later; Libgpg-error (aka Gpgrt) is a dependency of GPGME. The number of arguments to gpgrt_strconcat is limited to 47 but that should always be sufficient. In case a larger and non-fixed number of keys are to be supplied the following code can be used:

char *
xbuild_long_recpstring (void)
{
  gpgrt_stream_t memfp;
  const char *s;
  void *result;

  memfp = gpgrt_fopenmem (0, "w+b");
  if (!memfp)
    { perror ("fopenmem failed"); exit (2); }
  gpgrt_fputs ("--", memfp);
  while ((s = get_next_keyspec ()))
    {
      gpgrt_fputc ('\n', memfp);
      gpgrt_fputs (s, memfp);
    }
  gpgrt_fputc (0, memfp);
  if (gpgrt_ferror (memfp))
    { perror ("writing to memstream failed"); exit (2); }
  if (gpgrt_fclose_snatch (memfp, &result, NULL))
    { perror ("fclose_snatch failed"); exit (2); }
  return result;
}

In this example get_next_keyspec is expected to return the next key to be added to the string. Please take care: Encrypting to a large number of recipients is often questionable due to security reasons and also for the technicality that all keys are currently passed on the command line to gpg which has as a platform specific length limitation.

Function: gpgme_error_t gpgme_op_encrypt_ext_start (gpgme_ctx_t ctx, gpgme_key_t recp[], const char *recpstring, gpgme_encrypt_flags_t flags, gpgme_data_t plain, gpgme_data_t cipher)

SINCE: 1.11.0

This is an extended version of gpgme_op_encrypt_start with recpstring as additional parameter. If recp is NULL and recpstring is not NULL, the latter is expected to be a linefeed delimited string with the set of key specifications. In contrast to recp the keys are given directly as strings and there is no need to first create key objects. The keys are passed verbatim to the backend engine.

Data type: gpgme_encrypt_result_t

This is a pointer to a structure used to store the result of a gpgme_op_encrypt operation. After successfully encrypting data, you can retrieve the pointer to the result with gpgme_op_encrypt_result. The structure contains the following members:

gpgme_invalid_key_t invalid_recipients

A linked list with information about all invalid keys for which the data could not be encrypted.

Function: gpgme_encrypt_result_t gpgme_op_encrypt_result (gpgme_ctx_t ctx)

The function gpgme_op_encrypt_result returns a gpgme_encrypt_result_t pointer to a structure holding the result of a gpgme_op_encrypt operation. The pointer is only valid if the last operation on the context was a gpgme_op_encrypt, gpgme_op_encrypt_start, gpgme_op_sign or gpgme_op_sign_start operation. If this operation failed, this might be a NULL pointer. The returned pointer is only valid until the next operation is started on the context.

Function: gpgme_error_t gpgme_op_encrypt_sign (gpgme_ctx_t ctx, gpgme_key_t recp[], gpgme_encrypt_flags_t flags, gpgme_data_t plain, gpgme_data_t cipher)

The function gpgme_op_encrypt_sign does a combined encrypt and sign operation. It is used like gpgme_op_encrypt, but the ciphertext also contains signatures for the signers listed in ctx.

The combined encrypt and sign operation is currently only available for the OpenPGP crypto engine.

Function: gpgme_error_t gpgme_op_encrypt_sign_start (gpgme_ctx_t ctx, gpgme_key_t recp[], gpgme_encrypt_flags_t flags, gpgme_data_t plain, gpgme_data_t cipher)

The function gpgme_op_encrypt_sign_start initiates a gpgme_op_encrypt_sign operation. It can be completed by calling gpgme_wait on the context. See Waiting For Completion.

The function returns the error code GPG_ERR_NO_ERROR if the operation could be started successfully, and GPG_ERR_INV_VALUE if ctx, rset, plain or cipher is not a valid pointer.

Function: gpgme_error_t gpgme_op_encrypt_sign_ext (gpgme_ctx_t ctx, gpgme_key_t recp[], const char *recpstring, gpgme_encrypt_flags_t flags, gpgme_data_t plain, gpgme_data_t cipher)

SINCE: 1.11.0

This is an extended version of gpgme_op_encrypt_sign with recpstring as additional parameter. If recp is NULL and recpstring is not NULL, the latter is expected to be a linefeed delimited string with the set of key specifications. In contrast to recp the keys are given directly as strings and there is no need to first create the key objects. The keys are passed verbatim to the backend engine.

Function: gpgme_error_t gpgme_op_encrypt_sign_ext_start (gpgme_ctx_t ctx, gpgme_key_t recp[], const char *recpstring, gpgme_encrypt_flags_t flags, gpgme_data_t plain, gpgme_data_t cipher)

SINCE: 1.11.0

This is an extended version of gpgme_op_encrypt_sign_start with recpstring as additional parameter. If recp is NULL and recpstring is not NULL, the latter is expected to be a linefeed delimited string with the set of key specifications. In contrast to recp the keys are given directly as strings and there is no need to first create the key objects. The keys are passed verbatim to the backend engine.


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