SecureBlackbox 16: How do I use distributed signing without a client-side browser module (I have a client desktop application)?

Note: This article applies only to SecureBlackbox Legacy. For future development please consider using the latest version.

A number of classes have been extended with extra distributed signing-related methods. Follow the steps below for PDFBlackbox. Distributed signing works similarly with other SecureBlackbox components.

Note: The client here denotes a side holds a document or other data to sign (usually a web server or an application server). The server is the party that possesses the certificate with a private key and that signs the hash (usually a web browser or a client's desktop application).

I. Preparation (client side)

  1. Open the document and add a signature just as you do when signing the document in the usual (nondistributed) way.
  2. Instead of calling Close(), call the InitiateAsyncOperation() method. It will return a TElDCAsyncState object, which contains the information needed to perform the signing.
  3. Serialize state information to a stream with the use of its SaveToStream() method. Pass a TElDCXMLEncoding object to the Encoding parameter (this is the only encoding supported at the moment).
  4. Send the serialized state to the signing party (server).

II. Signing (server side)

  1. Create TElDCStandardServer and TElDCX509SignOperationHandler objects. Set up the latter by assigning a nonempty certificate storage to its CertStorage property and pass it to the TElDCStandardServer.AddOperationHandler() method.
  2. Pass the data received from the client to the TElDCStandardServer.Process() method. This method will return you the signing result.
  3. Send the obtained signing result back to the client.

III. Finalization (client side)

  1. Load the result from signing obtained from the server into a new TElDCAsyncResult instance.
  2. Pass the TElDCAsyncResult object along with the opened PDF document stream and a setup security handler object to the TElPDFDocument.CompleteAsyncOperation() method.

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