README

Lightweight helper to issue and validate signed licenses for your PHP apps using elliptic-curve cryptography.

Requirements

PHP 8.1+ with the OpenSSL extension enabled

Installation

If published to Packagist:

composer require maymeow/license

For local development in this repo:

composer install

Quick start

Generate a key pair for your license issuer and application, sign a license, and validate it.

use MayMeow\License\ECCryptographyHelper;
use MayMeow\License\License;
use MayMeow\License\LicenseGenerator;
use MayMeow\License\UnsignedArrayHelper;

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$crypto = new ECCryptographyHelper();

// 1) Create EC key pairs
[$issuerPrivateKey, $issuerPublicKey] = $crypto->generateEcKeyPair();

// 2) Build license payload
$licensePayload = LicenseGenerator::generateLicense(
	name: 'Alice Smith',
	email: 'alice@example.com',
	applicationFeatures: ['blogs' => 5],
	validDays: 365
);

// 3) Sign license with issuer private key
$signedLicense = LicenseGenerator::signLicense($licensePayload, $issuerPrivateKey);

// 4) Validate in your app using issuer public key
$appPublicKeyBytes = UnsignedArrayHelper::convertKeyToUnsignedArray($issuerPublicKey);
$license = new License($appPublicKeyBytes, $signedLicense);

if ($license->isValid()) {
	// gate features
	if ($license->hasFeature('blogs')) {
		// allow feature
	}
}

API highlights

LicenseGenerator::generateLicense() builds license metadata (id, owner, email, features, expiry).
LicenseGenerator::signLicense() signs the license JSON with an EC private key and returns a compact base64 package.
LicenseGenerator::verifyLicense() verifies a signed package with an EC public key.
License instance wraps a signed package and exposes:
- isValid() signature + expiry check
- isExpired() expiry only
- hasFeature($key) convenience feature flag lookup
- getOriginalLiceseData() returns the original base64 payload
- getFeatureValue($key) returns feature value when it is sed or true/false when the feature is only a key.

Handling keys as unsigned byte arrays

If you store keys as unsigned byte arrays (e.g., in config), convert them with UnsignedArrayHelper:

// Convert PEM to array
$publicKeyBytes = UnsignedArrayHelper::convertKeyToUnsignedArray($issuerPublicKey);

// Convert array back to PEM
$publicKeyPem = UnsignedArrayHelper::convertUnsignedArrayToKey($publicKeyBytes, 'public');

Additional helpers

ECCryptographyHelper also supports shared-secret derivation (deriveSharedSecret), HKDF, and AES-256-GCM encrypt/decrypt for custom payload handling.
RSACryptographyHelper offers basic RSA key generation and private/public encrypt/decrypt helpers if you prefer RSA.

Running the examples

php test.php generates a license, signs it, and validates it end-to-end.
php verificationtest.php demonstrates verifying a prebuilt license package.

License

MIT

maymeow / license

Maintainers

Details