XCA - X Certificate and key management: Common Actions

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## 4. Common Actions

Many actions are common to all crypto parts and are mentioned here once for all. The goal of this application is to provide an easy to use signing-tool and also a common place for all selected PKI items like requests or certificates.

## 4.1 Column Handling

Column visibility can be changed by the context menu of the table header or the "columns" submenu of the table context menu. It shows all available columns with checkboxes to show or hide them.

Columns can be resized and rearranged. This configuration is stored in the database and will be reassigned next time this database is opened.

## 4.2 Importing items

The import of an item can be done by either clicking the import button on the right or via the context menu available by right clicking into the list. The import function is smart enough to probe all known formats independent of the file extension:

- `Keys:` PEM private key, PEM public key, DER private key, DER public key, PKCS#8 private key, SSH public key.
- `Requests` DER request, PEM request, Netscape SPKAC request.
- `Certificates` DER certificate, PEM certificate (PKCS#12 and PKCS#7 certificates must be imported with an extra button, because they may contain more than one certificate and key)

After selecting the filename XCA will probe for the known formats of that item and in case of an error it prompts the `last` OpenSSL error message. It is possible to select more than one file by selecting them with SHIFT click.

Also the `Import` menu may be used to load items. Next to the filetypes above, it also supports `PEM` import. PEM describes the encoding instead of the filetype. So a PEM file can be any type of private key, crl certificate or csr. This import facility discovers the type and loads it.

When importing more than one Key, CRL, Certificate or Request all items are shown in a Multi-import dialog. When importing a PKCS#7 or PKCS#12 item, the contained keys and certificates are shown in the Multi-import dialog. By using the Multi-import dialog the items can be examined, imported or dropped.

After reading the item it searches for this item in the database and if it is unique, the item is stored in the database. Otherwise it shows a message containing the internal name of this item in the database.

## 4.3 Details of an Item

The details dialog can be accessed by double clicking the item, by the context menu or by the button on the right. The names of the issuers certificate and the corresponding key are clickable and their content will be shown on "double-click"

## 4.4 Renaming an Item

An Item can be renamed via the context menu by right-clicking on the item, by pressing <F2> or by the Rename button on the right border. If the new name of the item already exists in the database a `_1` will be appended to keep the internal name unique.

## 4.5 Deleting Items

Items can be deleted by the button on the right or via the context menu. Certificate signing requests can be deleted when they got signed, because they are not needed anymore. The request can be recovered from the resulting certificate by transforming the certificate to a request. This is however only possible if you own the private key of the certificate. Multiple items may be selected to delete them all at once.

## 4.6 Searching Items

The displayed list of items can be reduced by the search-input at the bottom right. It affects all tabs. It does not only search inside the displayed columns but the whole content of the items. It searches the internal name, issuer, subject, extensions, PKCS#10 attributes and token provider.

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