Question

I’m trying to use a Regular Expression to match a CN from an X.509 certificate.

The entire string will look something like this:

CN=JASON, OU=MYOU, O=MYORG

Here’s the nonworking code:

    Object certChain = request
            .getAttribute("javax.servlet.request.X509Certificate");
    String name = "";
    if (certChain != null) {
        X509Certificate certs[] = (X509Certificate[]) certChain;
        X509Certificate cert = certs[0];
        name = cert.getSubjectDN().getName();
    }

    String strPattern = "CN=(.*?),";
    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(strPattern);
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(name);
    String cname = "";
    if (matcher.matches()) {
        cname = matcher.group(1);
    }

Matcher.matches() returns false, but I don’t see a problem with the pattern. Can anyone help?

Jason

Answer 1

To match the string fully in Matcher.matches(), you could use:

String strPattern = "CN=(.*?),.*";