ClientCertificate AllowedCertificateAuthorities returns binary data instead of string list

[wilva]

Description
Using WebView2Samples, WinForms example I reproduced this.
Add the following code to the example project:

       private void WebView2Control_ClientCertificateRequested(object sender, CoreWebView2ClientCertificateRequestedEventArgs e)
        {
            IReadOnlyList<string> CAList = e.AllowedCertificateAuthorities;
            if (CAList.Count() > 0)
            {

            }
        }

and
this.webView2Control.CoreWebView2.ClientCertificateRequested += WebView2Control_ClientCertificateRequested;
Compile the example
Put a breakpoint on the line:
if (CAList.Count() > 0)
visit the site: https://client.badssl.com
When you hover over the breakpoint, you'll see that the data in CAList is:
"[0] = "0~1\v0\t\u0006\u0003U\u0004\u0006\u0013\u0002US1\u00130\u0011\u0006\u0003U\u0004\b\f\nCalifornia1\u00160\u0014\u0006\u0003U\u0004\a\f\rSan Francisco1\u000f0\r\u0006\u0003U\u0004\n\f\u0006BadSSL110/\u0006\u0003U\u0004\u0003\f(BadSSL Client Root Certificate ..."

I had expected something more readable, this does not seem right to me.
FWIW, I also see this on Win32, but that needs a lot more code to show what goes wrong.

Version
Runtime: 100.0.1185.29
Framework: WinForms
OS: Win10

AB#39005860

[champnic]

Hey @wilva - I believe this may be By Design. @monica-ch do you know more about this? Thanks!

[wilva]

Hi @champnic,

Thanks, I did wondered if it is intentional (DER encoding?), but the documentation here says it is a string:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.web.webview2.core.corewebview2clientcertificaterequestedeventargs.allowedcertificateauthorities?view=webview2-dotnet-1.0.1150.38#microsoft-web-webview2-core-corewebview2clientcertificaterequestedeventargs-allowedcertificateauthorities

AFAICT it isn't best practice to use a string data type for binary data. It is at least unexpected and if it was by design, then you might want to update the doc with how it is encoded.

[champnic]

I agree we should make our docs more clear here, whatever the expected format it.

[champnic]

This is fixed in runtimes version 108.0.1432.0+. Thanks!