A tool for dumping PGP keys as JSON.
From crates:
bash
cargo install pgpkeydump
If the build fails, then you might need nettle. For macOS:
bash
brew install nettle
bash
pgpkeydump somekey.asc
Both ASCII-armored and binary inputs should work. If the filename argument is omitted, standard input is read instead. Output always goes to standard output.
bash
pgpkeydump \
<(curl https://keys.openpgp.org/vks/v1/by-keyid/85AE00C504833B3C)
Produces:
json
{
"armor_headers": [
"46C3 9716 A8F0 7E98 384E 28F7 85AE 00C5 0483 3B3C",
"William Woodruff (yossarian.net) <william@yossarian.net"
],
"fingerprint": "46C39716A8F07E98384E28F785AE00C504833B3C",
"keyid": "85AE00C504833B3C",
"userids": [
"William Woodruff (yossarian.net) <william@yossarian.net>"
],
"primary_key": {
"algorithm": "RSA",
"parameters": {
"algorithm": "RSA",
"e": {
"bitness": 17,
"value": "010001"
},
"n": {
"bitness": 4096,
"value": "long-value-here"
}
},
"fingerprint": "46C39716A8F07E98384E28F785AE00C504833B3C",
"keyid": "85AE00C504833B3C",
"expiration": "2025-05-23T16:56:46+00:00",
"purposes": {
"authentication": true,
"certification": true,
"signing": true,
"storage_encryption": false,
"transport_encryption": false
}
},
"subkeys": [],
"revocation_keys": [],
"alive": true
}
PGP is a miserable ecosystem, and there is no good way to get a machine-readable representation of a PGP message without mucking through either an unstable textual CLI output or parsing individual PGP packets.
This tool exists solely to take a key-shaped PGP message and dump (some of) its contents. It doesn't support anything else, will never support anything else, and will never attempt to actually verify the authenticity or integrity of its inputs. It is not suitable for use for anything except exploration of a PGP key message's internals.
If this tool doesn't do what you want, then the closest alternatives are:
pgpdump, which is
semi-maintained but only provides a textual output (and crashes for me on all
kinds of reasonable inputs);sq packet dump, which is maintained
but only provides a textual output.