ACME Java Client

This is a Java client for the Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol as specified in RFC 8555.

ACME is a protocol that a certificate authority (CA) and an applicant can use to automate the process of verification and certificate issuance.

This Java client helps connecting to an ACME server, and performing all necessary steps to manage certificates.

It is an independent open source implementation that is not affiliated with or endorsed by Let's Encrypt.

Features

• Mature and stable code base. First release was in December 2015!
• Fully RFC 8555 compliant
• Supports the http-01, dns-01, and tls-alpn-01 (RFC 8737) challenges
• Supports RFC 8738 IP identifier validation
• Supports RFC 8739 short-term automatic certificate renewal (experimental)
• Supports RFC 8823 for S/MIME certificates (experimental)
• Supports draft-ietf-acme-ari-01 for renewal information
• Easy to use Java API
• Requires JRE 11 or higher
• Built with maven, packages available at Maven Central
• Extensive unit and integration tests
• Adheres to Semantic Versioning

If you require Java 8 or Android compatibility, you can use acme4j v2 instead. However, v2 is not actively developed anymore and will only receive security fixes.

Dependencies

• Bouncy Castle
• jose4j
• slf4j
• For acme4j-smime: Jakarta Mail, Bouncy Castle

Usage

• See the online documentation about how to use acme4j.
• For a quick start, have a look at the source code of an example.

Announcements

Follow our Mastodon feed for release notes and other acme4j related news.

• Mastodon: @acme4j@foojay.social
• RSS: https://foojay.social/@acme4j.rss

Contribute

• Fork the Source code at GitHub. Feel free to send pull requests (see Contributing for the rules).
• Found a bug? File a bug report!

License

acme4j is open source software. The source code is distributed under the terms of Apache License 2.0.

Donate

If you would like to support my work on acme4j, you can do so on at GitHub Sponsors or at Ko-Fi. Thank you!

Acknowledgements

• I would like to thank Brian Campbell and all the other jose4j developers. acme4j would not exist without your excellent work.
• Thanks to Daniel McCarney for his help with the ACME protocol, Pebble, and Boulder.
• Ulrich Krause for his help to make acme4j run on IBM Java VMs.
• I also like to thank everyone who contributed to acme4j.
• The Mastodon account is hosted by foojay.io.