EVP_PKEY_SET1...ED_PUBLIC_KEY(3SSL)

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version 4.0.3 · 13 versions

🦋 EVP_PKEY_SET1...ED_PUBLIC_KEY(3SSL) 🦋

hiii bestie welcome to the OpenSSL 3SSL manual page for the set-and-get-the-public-key functions 💖 this is the one where you shove an encoded public key into an EVP_PKEY, or pull one back out. it's giving crypto handshake energy. let's go 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

EVP_PKEY_set1_encoded_public_key, EVP_PKEY_get1_encoded_public_key, EVP_PKEY_set1_tls_encodedpoint, EVP_PKEY_get1_tls_encodedpoint — these are the functions that set and get public key data inside an EVP_PKEY 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <openssl/evp.h>

int EVP_PKEY_set1_encoded_public_key(EVP_PKEY *pkey,
                                     const unsigned char *pub, size_t publen);

size_t EVP_PKEY_get1_encoded_public_key(EVP_PKEY *pkey, unsigned char **ppub);

okay so heads up: the next two functions have been deprecated since OpenSSL 3.0, and you can hide them entirely by defining OPENSSL_API_COMPAT with a suitable version value — see openssl_user_macros(7) for the deets:

int EVP_PKEY_set1_tls_encodedpoint(EVP_PKEY *pkey,
                                   const unsigned char *pt, size_t ptlen);

size_t EVP_PKEY_get1_tls_encodedpoint(EVP_PKEY *pkey, unsigned char **ppt);

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

EVP_PKEY_set1_encoded_public_key() is the one where you set the public key value inside an existing EVP_PKEY object — and no, that object can't already have a public or private key assigned, bestie, it's gotta be fresh ✨ For the built-in OpenSSL algorithms this currently only works for the ones that support key exchange or key encapsulation. Also important: parameters are not set as part of this operation, so a typical app will make an EVP_PKEY first, set the params on it, and then call this function. Setting the params might be done with EVP_PKEY_copy_parameters(3), for example 🎀

The format for the encoded public key depends on which algorithm you're using, so pay attention 👀

For DH it should be encoded as a positive integer in big-endian form.
For EC it should be a point conforming to Sec. 2.3.4 of the SECG SEC 1 ("Elliptic Curve Cryptography") standard.
For X25519 and X448 it should be encoded in the format defined by RFC7748.
For ML-KEM-512, ML-KEM-768 and ML-KEM-1024, this is the public key format defined in FIPS 203 (the 12-bit per-coefficient encoded public t vector and 32-byte matrix seed rho).

The key to be updated is supplied in pkey. The buffer containing the encoded key is pointed to be pub. The length of the buffer is supplied in publen.

EVP_PKEY_get1_encoded_public_key() does the equivalent thing except it hands the encoded public key back to the application 🫶 The key containing the public key data is supplied in pkey. A buffer containing the encoded key will be allocated and stored in *ppub. The length of the encoded public key is returned by the function. And bestie — you are responsible for freeing that allocated buffer, don't leave it hanging 😭

The macro EVP_PKEY_set1_tls_encodedpoint() is deprecated and simply calls EVP_PKEY_set1_encoded_public_key() with all the same arguments. New applications should use EVP_PKEY_set1_encoded_public_key() instead 💅

The macro EVP_PKEY_get1_tls_encodedpoint() is deprecated and simply calls EVP_PKEY_get1_encoded_public_key() with all the same arguments. New applications should use EVP_PKEY_get1_encoded_public_key() instead 💅

⭐ RETURN VALUES ⭐

EVP_PKEY_set1_encoded_public_key() returns 1 for success and 0 or a negative value for failure.
EVP_PKEY_get1_encoded_public_key() returns the length of the encoded key or 0 for failure.

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

See EVP_PKEY_derive_init(3) and EVP_PKEY_derive(3) if you wanna know about performing a key exchange operation 👑

🌈 Set up a peer's EVP_PKEY ready for a key exchange operation

#include <openssl/evp.h>

int exchange(EVP_PKEY *ourkey, unsigned char *peer_pub, size_t peer_pub_len)
{
    EVP_PKEY *peerkey = EVP_PKEY_new();

    if (peerkey == NULL || EVP_PKEY_copy_parameters(peerkey, ourkey) <= 0)
        return 0;

    if (EVP_PKEY_set1_encoded_public_key(peerkey, peer_pub,
                                         peer_pub_len) <= 0)
        return 0;

    /* Do the key exchange here */

    EVP_PKEY_free(peerkey);

    return 1;
}

🧚 Get an encoded public key to send to a peer

#include <openssl/evp.h>

int get_encoded_pub_key(EVP_PKEY *ourkey)
{
    unsigned char *pubkey;
    size_t pubkey_len;

   pubkey_len = EVP_PKEY_get1_encoded_public_key(ourkey, &pubkey);
   if (pubkey_len == 0)
       return 0;

   /*
    * Send the encoded public key stored in the buffer at "pubkey" and of
    * length pubkey_len, to the peer.
    */

   OPENSSL_free(pubkey);
   return 1;
}

👑 HISTORY 👑

EVP_PKEY_set1_encoded_public_key() and EVP_PKEY_get1_encoded_public_key() were added in OpenSSL 3.0.
EVP_PKEY_set1_tls_encodedpoint() and EVP_PKEY_get1_tls_encodedpoint() were deprecated in OpenSSL 3.0.
Support for ML-KEM was added in OpenSSL 3.5.

💖 COPYRIGHT 💖

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>.

and that's the whole page bestie, no notes 💅 this was OpenSSL 4.0.3, dated 2026-09-2, and it's the EVP_PKEY_SET1...ED_PUBLIC_KEY(3SSL) page. go forth and exchange keys responsibly 🦋✨🎀

📦 where this page comes from

ubuntu stonking: libssl-doc 4.0.3-1ubuntu1 · Apache-2.0
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on 2026-11-03: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms

EVP_PKEY_SET1...ED_PUBLIC_KEY(3SSL)