This class is a javax.net.SocketFactory for creating SSLSocket objects. Most applications use the default SSLSocketFactory returned by the static getdefault( ) method. Once this SSLSocketFactory has been obtained, they use one of the inherited createSocket( ) methods to create, and optionally connect and bind, a new SSLSocket. The return value of the createSocket( ) methods is a java.net.Socket object, but you can safely cast this object to a SSLSocket if you need to. SSLSocketFactory defines one new version of createSocket( ) in addition to the ones it inherits from its superclass. This version of the method creates an SSLSocket that is layered over an existing Socket object rather than creating a new socket entirely from scratch.

Applications that need to customize the SSL configuration and cannot use the default socket factory may obtain a custom SSLSocketFactory from an SSLContext, which is essentially a factory for socket factories. See SSLContext for details.

Figure 18-17. javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory

public abstract class SSLSocketFactory extends javax.net.SocketFactory {
// Public Constructors
     public SSLSocketFactory( );  
// Public Class Methods
     public static javax.net.SocketFactory getDefault( );                 synchronized
// Public Instance Methods
     public abstract java.net.Socket createSocket(java.net.Socket s, String host, 
        int port, boolean autoClose) 
        throws java.io.IOException;  
     public abstract String[ ] getDefaultCipherSuites( );  
     public abstract String[ ] getSupportedCipherSuites( );  
}

Passed To

HttpsURLConnection.{setDefaultSSLSocketFactory( ), setSSLSocketFactory( )}

Returned By

HttpsURLConnection.{getDefaultSSLSocketFactory( ), getSSLSocketFactory( )}, SSLContext.getSocketFactory( ), SSLContextSpi.engineGetSocketFactory( )