I am storing a public key in a env variable as a string. This public key is from a .pem file. When I try to use it in my code, I get the following error
error:0909006C:PEM routines:get_name:no start line
I have tried what other users have suggested, by converting it to base64 and then using the key, but I still get the same error.
env variable for the public key
PUB_KEY='-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----randomgibberish-----END PUBLIC KEY-----'
Code for converting it to base64
const pubKey = process.env.PUB_KEY
const buff = Buffer.from(pubKey).toString('base64');
console.log(buff)
Using it in the createPublicKey method here
crypto.createPublicKey({
key: buff,
format: 'pem',
});
Any idea what could be going wrong? TIA
Your code is breaking because of line break in the public keys.
No need to use base64, I suggest you to use line breaks (\n) in env file to store the key just like this:
If assuming your key is something like this:
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDlkH/R64I0H1awndlU1w6BseS9
5ygy2v6rwV7BA/xlNGCtWfsQ8UlbJl7fawZ1hgL7H8FcUkGk/RsWB7xRpUeHypnE
8UU2bbhaS+X8Bze2kdoayerb5+YK6kZlyPvmI+WVxksKUEChcKE+t83mqVpnQnO9
TkTXhzvual4cG+WatwIDAQAB
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
then save is it like this (\n on the end of the line and making it a whole string, you can see how i have stored it)
export publicKey = '-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----\nMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDlkH/R64I0H1awndlU1w6BseS9\n5ygy2v6rwV7BA/xlNGCtWfsQ8UlbJl7fawZ1hgL7H8FcUkGk/RsWB7xRpUeHypnE\n8UU2bbhaS+X8Bze2kdoayerb5+YK6kZlyPvmI+WVxksKUEChcKE+t83mqVpnQnO9\nTkTXhzvual4cG+WatwIDAQAB\n-----END PUBLIC KEY-----'
And the in the code use:
const { publicKey } = process.env
const originalPublicKey = publicKey.replace(/\\n/g, '\n')
This will do the work, it will generate your original keys.
const publicKey = '-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----\nMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDlkH/R64I0H1awndlU1w6BseS9\n5ygy2v6rwV7BA/xlNGCtWfsQ8UlbJl7fawZ1hgL7H8FcUkGk/RsWB7xRpUeHypnE\n8UU2bbhaS+X8Bze2kdoayerb5+YK6kZlyPvmI+WVxksKUEChcKE+t83mqVpnQnO9\nTkTXhzvual4cG+WatwIDAQAB\n-----END PUBLIC KEY-----'
const originalPublicKey = publicKey.replace(/\\n/g, '\n')
console.log(originalPublicKey)then you can simply use this in your code.
crypto.createPublicKey({
key: originalPublicKey,
format: 'pem',
});
Let me know in the comments, if have any issue after this too.
Your key seems to be a PEM encoded public key in X.509/SPKI format. However, the line breaks are missing. These are to be set so that header and footer are each on a single line. In the body there is a line break after every 64 characters.
A correctly formatted PEM key can be processed directly by createPublicKey(). The key will be accepted even if the line breaks in the body are missing, but header and footer must be in different lines, otherwise the posted error message will be displayed: error:0909006C:PEM routines:get_name:no start line.
Example:
var crypto = require('crypto')
var x509 = `-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAunF5aDa6HCfLMMI/MZLT
5hDk304CU+ypFMFiBjowQdUMQKYHZ+fklB7GpLxCatxYJ/hZ7rjfHH3Klq20/Y1E
bYDRopyTSfkrTzPzwsX4Ur/l25CtdQldhHCTMgwf/Ev/buBNobfzdZE+Dhdv5lQw
KtjI43lDKvAi5kEet2TFwfJcJrBiRJeEcLfVgWTXGRQn7gngWKykUu5rS83eAU1x
H9FLojQfyia89/EykiOO7/3UWwd+MATZ9HLjSx2/Lf3g2jr81eifEmYDlri/OZp4
OhZu+0Bo1LXloCTe+vmIQ2YCX7EatUOuyQMt2Vwx4uV+d/A3DP6PtMGBKpF8St4i
GwIDAQAB
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----`;
// Import
var importedPubKey = crypto.createPublicKey({
key: x509,
format: 'pem' // default, can also be omitted
});
// Export
console.log(importedPubKey.export({type: 'spki', format: 'pem'}))
The key can also be written as one-liner with line breaks as escape sequences (\n), e.g. for header and footer in single lines:
var x509 = "-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----\nMIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAunF5aDa6HCfLMMI/MZLT5hDk304CU+ypFMFiBjowQdUMQKYHZ+fklB7GpLxCatxYJ/hZ7rjfHH3Klq20/Y1EbYDRopyTSfkrTzPzwsX4Ur/l25CtdQldhHCTMgwf/Ev/buBNobfzdZE+Dhdv5lQwKtjI43lDKvAi5kEet2TFwfJcJrBiRJeEcLfVgWTXGRQn7gngWKykUu5rS83eAU1xH9FLojQfyia89/EykiOO7/3UWwd+MATZ9HLjSx2/Lf3g2jr81eifEmYDlri/OZp4OhZu+0Bo1LXloCTe+vmIQ2YCX7EatUOuyQMt2Vwx4uV+d/A3DP6PtMGBKpF8St4iGwIDAQAB\n-----END PUBLIC KEY-----"
All this also works if the key is stored in an environment variable (e.g. X509ENV) and retrieved (via process.env.X509ENV) as long as the line breaks are correctly taken into account.