Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition [Electronic resources]

This class validates certificate chains, establishing a chain of trust from the end entity to a trust anchor, and thereby establishing the validity of the public key presented in the end entity's certificate. The CertPathValidator is provider-based and algorithm-independent. To obtain a CertPathValidator instance, call one of the static getInstance( ) methods specifying the name of the desired validation algorithm and, optionally, the provider to use. The "PKIX" algorithm for validating X.509 certificates is the only one supported by the default "SUN" provider.

Once you have a CertPathValidator object, you can use it to validate certificate chains by passing the CertPath object to be validated to the validate( ) method along with a CertPathParameters object that specifies valid trust anchors and other validation parameters. CertPathParameters is simply a marker interface, and you must use an application-specific implementation such as PKIXParameters. If validation fails, the validate( ) method throws a CertPathValidatorException which may include the index in the chain of the certificate that failed to validate. Otherwise, if validation is successful, the validate( ) method returns a CertPathValidatorResult. If you are interested in the details of the validation (such as the trust anchor that was used or the public key of the end entity), you may cast this returned value to an algorithm-specific subtype such as PKIXCertPathValidatorResult and use its methods to find out more about the result.

public class 
CertPathValidator  {
// Protected Constructors
protected 
CertPathValidator (CertPathValidatorSpi 
validatorSpi , 
java.security.Provider 
provider , String 
algorithm );  
// Public Class Methods
public static final String 
getDefaultType ( );  
public static CertPathValidator 
getInstance (String 
algorithm ) 
throws java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;  
public static CertPathValidator 
getInstance (String 
algorithm , 
String 
provider ) 
throws java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException, 
java.security.NoSuchProviderException;  
public static CertPathValidator 
getInstance (String 
algorithm , 
java.security.Provider 
provider ) 
throws java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;  
// Public Instance Methods
public final String 
getAlgorithm ( );  
public final java.security.Provider 
getProvider ( );  
public final CertPathValidatorResult 
validate (CertPath 
certPath , 
CertPathParameters 
params ) 
throws CertPathValidatorException, 
java.security.InvalidAlgorithmParameterException;  
}