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Introduction to gRPC

Client-Side Authentication

Understand how to implement client-side authentication in gRPC by configuring TLS with client certificates, keys, and CA certificates. Learn to create secure and insecure connection channels, manage client properties, and build authenticated communication between the client and server.

We'll cover the following...

Our FTP server is now configured to run in two modes: IN-secure (without using any security credentials) and secure (using root, server, and client certificates). In this lesson, we will modify the FTP client project and add certificates as well as a mechanism to create the channel using two-way authentication.

Client configuration properties

For a secure connection, the client needs to verify its identity. The client needs the root CA certificate, client certificate and client key for this purpose. We will specify the paths of these files in a configuration file client.config.properties in the resources directory src/main/resources/ in the ftp-service-client project.

CLIENT_KEY_PATH=target/certs/clientKey.pexm

CLIENT_CERT_PATH=target/certs/clientCert.pem

CA_CERT_PATH=target/certs/rootCACert.pem
client.config.properties file

Loading client configuration

After defining the client.config.properties configuration file, we will create a class called ClientConfiguration in the io/datajek/ftpservice/utils package. This class loads the contents of the configuration file. You can find the explanation of the code shown below in the Server and Client Configuration Properties lesson.

The ClientConfiguration class is shown below:

/*
 * Copyright 2023, DataJek.io
 * All Rights Reserved
 */
package io.datajek.ftpservice.utils;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.Properties;
/**
 * This class manages the configuration settings for the client.
 */
public class ClientConfiguration {
    private Properties properties;
    public ClientConfiguration() {
        try (InputStream input =
            ClientConfiguration.class.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("client.config.properties")) {
            properties = new Properties();
            properties.load(input);
        } catch (IOException e) {
        //    log.error("Cannot read in config file", e);
        }
    }
    public String getCAPath() {
        return properties.getProperty(ClientConstants.CA_CERT_PATH);
    }
    public String getClientCertPath() {
        return properties.getProperty(ClientConstants.CLIENT_CERT_PATH);
    }
    public String getClientKeyPath() {
        return properties.getProperty(ClientConstants.CLIENT_KEY_PATH);
    }
}
ClientConfiguration class

Adding client constants

We have created a utility class named ClientConstantsDefining_client_constants in the Configuring a gRPC client lesson. This class serves as the repository for all constants utilized by the FTP client, such as port numbers, default chunk size, load balancing strategies, and algorithm names. We will add more constants to this class to refer to the configuration properties of the client.

Add the ...