UI_UTIL_READ_PW(3ossl)

okay so bestie, welcome to the 3ossl OpenSSL page for UI_UTIL_read_pw_string, UI_UTIL_read_pw, and UI_UTIL_wrap_read_pem_callback — user interface utilities. It’s giving helper-function excellence, no cap. 💅

✨ NAME ✨

• UI_UTIL_read_pw_string
• UI_UTIL_read_pw
• UI_UTIL_wrap_read_pem_callback

They’re all about user interface utilities. 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

        #include <openssl/ui.h>

        int UI_UTIL_read_pw_string(char *buf, int length, const char *prompt,
                                   int verify);
        int UI_UTIL_read_pw(char *buf, char *buff, int size, const char *prompt,
                            int verify);
        UI_METHOD *UI_UTIL_wrap_read_pem_callback(pem_password_cb *cb, int rwflag);

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

• UI_UTIL_read_pw_string() — asks for a passphrase, using prompt as a prompt, and stores it in buf. The maximum allowed size is given with length, including the terminating NUL byte. If verify is nonzero, the password will be verified as well. 🔐
• UI_UTIL_read_pw() — does the same as UI_UTIL_read_pw_string(), the difference is that you can give it an external buffer buff for the verification passphrase. 💖
• UI_UTIL_wrap_read_pem_callback() — can be used to create a temporary UI_METHOD that wraps a given PEM password callback cb. rwflag is used to specify if this method will be used for passphrase entry without (0) or with (1) verification. When not used any more, the returned method should be freed with UI_destroy_method(). 🫶

🔥 NOTES 🔥

UI_UTIL_read_pw_string() and UI_UTIL_read_pw() use default UI_METHOD. See UI_get_default_method(3) and friends for more information. 👑

The result from the UI_METHOD created by UI_UTIL_wrap_read_pem_callback() will generate password strings in the encoding that the given password callback generates.

The default password prompting functions (apart from UI_UTIL_read_pw_string() and UI_UTIL_read_pw(), there is PEM_def_callback(), EVP_read_pw_string() and EVP_read_pw_string_min()) all use the default UI_METHOD. ⭐

💀 RETURN VALUES 💀

• UI_UTIL_read_pw_string() and UI_UTIL_read_pw() return 0 on success or a negative value on error. 😭
• UI_UTIL_wrap_read_pem_callback() returns a valid UI_METHOD structure or NULL if an error occurred. 🙈

🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

UI_get_default_method(3)

📜 COPYRIGHT 📜

Copyright 2001-2018 The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved.

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (the "License"). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You can obtain a copy in the file LICENSE in the source distribution or at <https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html>.

---

That’s the whole page, bestie. This cuteness was brought to you by OpenSSL 3.5.0, dated 2026-09-25, and the manual page is UI_UTIL_READ_PW(3ossl). 🫶✨👑