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PROPERTY(7SSL) OpenSSL PROPERTY(7SSL)
NAME
property - Properties, a selection mechanism for algorithm implementations
DESCRIPTION
As of OpenSSL 3.0, a new method has been introduced to decide which of multiple
implementations of an algorithm will be used. The method is centered around the concept
of properties. Each implementation defines a number of properties and when an algorithm
is being selected, filters based on these properties can be used to choose the most
appropriate implementation of the algorithm.
Properties are like variables, they are referenced by name and have a value assigned.
Property Names
Property names fall into two categories: those reserved by the OpenSSL project and user
defined names. A reserved property name consists of a single C-style identifier (except
for leading underscores not being permitted), which begins with a letter and can be
followed by any number of letters, numbers and underscores. Property names are case-
insensitive, but OpenSSL will only use lowercase letters.
A user defined property name is similar, but it must consist of two or more C-style
identifiers, separated by periods. The last identifier in the name can be considered the
'true' property name, which is prefixed by some sort of 'namespace'. Providers for
example could include their name in the prefix and use property names like
<provider_name>.<property_name>
<provider_name>.<algorithm_name>.<property_name>
Properties
A property is a name=value pair. A property definition is a sequence of comma separated
properties. There can be any number of properties in a definition, however each name must
be unique. For example: "" defines an empty property definition (i.e., no restriction);
"my.foo=bar" defines a property named my.foo which has a string value bar and
"iteration.count=3" defines a property named iteration.count which has a numeric value of
3. The full syntax for property definitions appears below.
Implementations
Each implementation of an algorithm can define any number of properties. For example, the
default provider defines the property provider=default for all of its algorithms.
Likewise, OpenSSL's FIPS provider defines provider=fips and the legacy provider defines
provider=legacy for all of their algorithms.
Queries
A property query clause is a single conditional test. For example, "fips=yes",
"provider!=default" or "?iteration.count=3". The first two represent mandatory clauses,
such clauses must match for any algorithm to even be under consideration. The third
clause represents an optional clause. Matching such clauses is not a requirement, but any
additional optional match counts in favor of the algorithm. More details about that in
the Lookups section. A property query is a sequence of comma separated property query
clauses. It is an error if a property name appears in more than one query clause. The
full syntax for property queries appears below, but the available syntactic features are:
o = is an infix operator providing an equality test.
o != is an infix operator providing an inequality test.
o ? is a prefix operator that means that the following clause is optional but preferred.
o - is a prefix operator that means any global query clause involving the following
property name should be ignored.
o "..." is a quoted string. The quotes are not included in the body of the string.
o '...' is a quoted string. The quotes are not included in the body of the string.
Lookups
When an algorithm is looked up, a property query is used to determine the best matching
algorithm. All mandatory query clauses must be present and the implementation that
additionally has the largest number of matching optional query clauses will be used. If
there is more than one such optimal candidate, the result will be chosen from amongst
those in an indeterminate way. Ordering of optional clauses is not significant.
Shortcut
In order to permit a more concise expression of boolean properties, there is one short
cut: a property name alone (e.g. "my.property") is exactly equivalent to "my.property=yes"
in both definitions and queries.
Global and Local
Two levels of property query are supported. A context based property query that applies
to all fetch operations and a local property query. Where both the context and local
queries include a clause with the same name, the local clause overrides the context
clause.
It is possible for a local property query to remove a clause in the context property query
by preceding the property name with a '-'. For example, a context property query that
contains "fips=yes" would normally result in implementations that have "fips=yes".
However, if the setting of the "fips" property is irrelevant to the operations being
performed, the local property query can include the clause "-fips". Note that the local
property query could not use "fips=no" because that would disallow any implementations
with "fips=yes" rather than not caring about the setting.
SYNTAX
The lexical syntax in EBNF is given by:
Definition ::= PropertyName ( '=' Value )?
( ',' PropertyName ( '=' Value )? )*
Query ::= PropertyQuery ( ',' PropertyQuery )*
PropertyQuery ::= '-' PropertyName
| '?'? ( PropertyName (( '=' | '!=' ) Value)?)
Value ::= NumberLiteral | StringLiteral
StringLiteral ::= QuotedString | UnquotedString
QuotedString ::= '"' [^"]* '"' | "'" [^']* "'"
UnquotedString ::= [^{space},]+
NumberLiteral ::= '0' ( [0-7]* | 'x' [0-9A-Fa-f]+ ) | '-'? [1-9] [0-9]+
PropertyName ::= [A-Z] [A-Z0-9_]* ( '.' [A-Z] [A-Z0-9_]* )*
HISTORY
Properties were added in OpenSSL 3.0
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2019-2021 The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved.
Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (the "License"). You may not use this file except
in compliance with the License. You can obtain a copy in the file LICENSE in the source
distribution or at <https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html>.
3.0.2 2025-09-18 PROPERTY(7SSL)
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