NAME

NAME

Mojo::ACME - Mojo-based ACME-protocol client

SYNOPSIS

# myapp.pl
use Mojolicious::Lite;
plugin 'ACME';
get '/' => {text => 'Hello World'};
app->start;

# then on the command line, while the app is available on port 80
# NOTE! you should use -t when testing on following command

# register an account key if necessary
$ ./myapp.pl acme account register
Writing account.key

# generate your domain cert
$ ./myapp.pl acme cert generate mydomain.com
Writing myapp.key
Writing myapp.crt

# install your cert and restart your server per server instructions

DESCRIPTION

Let's Encrypt <https://letsencrypt.org> (also known as letsencrypt) is
a service that provices free SSL certificates via an automated system.
The service uses (and indeed defines) a protocol called ACME to
securely communicate authentication, verification, and certificate
issuance. If you aren't familiar with ACME or at least certificate
issuance, you might want to see how it works
<https://letsencrypt.org/how-it-works> first. While many clients
already exist, web framework plugins have the unique ability to handle
the challenge response internally and therefore make for the easiest
possible letsencrypt (or other ACME service) experience.

DEVELOPMENT STATUS

The plugin and command level apis should be fairly standardized; the
author expects few changes to this level of the system. That said, the
lower level modules, like Mojo::ACME are to be considered unstable and
should not be relied upon. Use of these classes directly is highly
discouraged for the time being.

ARCHITECTURE

The system consists of three major component classes, the plugin
Mojolicious::Plugin::ACME, the commands, and the lower level classes
which they rely on.

Plugin

The plugin is the glue that holds the system together. It adds the acme
command (and its subcommands) to your app's command system. It also
establishes a route which handles the challenge request from the ACME
service. During your certificate issuance, you must prove that you
control the requested domain by serving specified content at a specific
location. This route makes that possible.

The plugin itself reads configuration out of the application's config
method. This can be set directly in the application or loaded from a
file via say Mojolicious::Plugin::Config in the usual way. It looks for
a config key acme containing a hash of configuration options. Those
options can be seen in the Mojolicious::Plugin::ACME documentation.

The most important of these is challenge_url. In order to know how to
respond to the challenge request, your server will make a signed HTTP
request to your ACME client which will be listening. This url is used
both as the listen value of the ACME client's built-in server, as well
as the base of your server's request. It is advised that you use a url
which isn't publically available if possible, though the requests are
HMAC signed in any event.

Commands

The system provides several commands, including those for creating and
verifying an account, as well as certificate issuance (and soon,
revoking). The commands are made available simply by using the plugin
in your application. They are then available in the same manner as
built-in commands

$ ./myapp.pl acme ...

While some options are sub-command specific, all sub-commands take a
few options. Important among those is the --ca option and more
conveniently the --test (or -t) flag. Let's Encrypt has severe rate
limiting for issuance of certicates on its production hosts. Using the
test flag uses the staging server which has greatly relaxed rate
limits, though doesn't issue signed certs or create real accounts. It
does however use exactly the same process as the production service and
issue valid (if not signed) certs. The author highly recommends trying
the process on the staging server first.

Modules (Low Level Usage)

As mentioned before, the author hopes to stabilize the low-level
interface to be reusable/accessible, however for the time being that is
not so and things WILL CHANGE UNEXPECTEDLY!

SEE ALSO

* Mojolicious - http://mojolicio.us

* Let's Encrypt - https://letsencrypt.org/

* ACME Protocol - https://github.com/letsencrypt/acme-spec

* acme-tiny client from which I took a lot of inspiration/direction -
https://github.com/diafygi/acme-tiny

SOURCE REPOSITORY

http://github.com/jberger/Mojo-ACME

AUTHOR

Joel Berger, <[email protected]>

CONTRIBUTORS

* Mario Domgoergen (mdom)

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2016 by Joel Berger and "CONTRIBUTORS"

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.