This class represents a factory for secret keys.

Key factories are used to convert keys (opaque cryptographic keys of type Key) into key specifications (transparent representations of the underlying key material), and vice versa. Secret key factories operate only on secret (symmetric) keys.

Key factories are bi-directional, i.e., they allow to build an opaque key object from a given key specification (key material), or to retrieve the underlying key material of a key object in a suitable format.

Application developers should refer to their provider's documentation to find out which key specifications are supported by the generateSecret and getKeySpec methods. For example, the DES secret-key factory supplied by the "SunJCE" provider supports DESKeySpec as a transparent representation of DES keys, and that provider's secret-key factory for Triple DES keys supports DESedeKeySpec as a transparent representation of Triple DES keys.

Every implementation of the Java platform is required to support the following standard SecretKeyFactory algorithms:

DES
DESede

These algorithms are described in the SecretKeyFactory section of the Java Cryptography Architecture Standard Algorithm Name Documentation. Consult the release documentation for your implementation to see if any other algorithms are supported.

Since: 1.4