Network Programming in .NET

App Download link:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mobile-webcam/id652758590?mt=8

Got a webcam or IP cam at home, and you’d like to check up on your pets / kids or just to check that everything is OK? This new update to our Mobile Webcam App – gives you the ability to check out your webcam from your wrist.

It’s a first version, so the image stream is slow, but it’s a practical application of WatchOS, paired with an existing app.

A quick WatchOS tip; you can’t use the following code to download an image on a real device, even through it works on the simulator:

NSData * imageData = [[NSData alloc]
initWithContentsOfURL: [NSURL URLWithString: self.strUrl ]];
[self.imgOutput setImage:[UIImage imageWithData: imageData]];

Instead, you have to use asynchronous code as follows;

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:
@”http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Williams_River-27527.jpg”%5D;
NSURLSessionDownloadTask *downloadPhotoTask = [[NSURLSession sharedSession]
downloadTaskWithURL:url completionHandler:^(NSURL *location, NSURLResponse *response, NSError *error) {
UIImage *downloadedImage = [UIImage imageWithData:
[NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:location]];
[self.imgOutput setImage:downloadedImage ];
}];
[downloadPhotoTask resume];

Hope this helps! 🙂

StartCom was a popular SSL cert issuer before the days of LetsEncrypt, as it was one of the few providers that offered SSL certs for free, and thus was very popular. However, after failing to play ball with Mozilla, and were using the obsolete Hashing cypher SHA-1.

This means, if you have an SSL cert issued by StartCom, then you better get a new cert quickly. I personally recommend LetsEncrypt, since it’s free, but others are available. – Otherwise Google Chrome, and Firefox will say your website is insecure.

Mozilla’s official word is:

Mozilla has discovered that a Certificate Authority (CA) called WoSign has had a number of technical and management failures. Most seriously, we discovered they were backdating SSL certificates in order to get around the deadline that CAs stop issuing SHA-1 SSL certificates by January 1, 2016. Additionally, Mozilla discovered that WoSign had acquired full ownership of another CA called StartCom and failed to disclose this, as required by Mozilla policy. The representatives of WoSign and StartCom denied and continued to deny both of these allegations until sufficient data was collected to demonstrate that both allegations were correct. The levels of deception demonstrated by representatives of the combined company have led to Mozilla’s decision to distrust future certificates chaining up to the currently-included WoSign and StartCom root certificates.

Ever had an idea, and thought, I wonder does this already exist. You do a quick search on Google, and you find someone has done it really well. That’s what I found with Sentry.io

I’ve always been plagued with clients or customers saying vague things like, “this form doesn’t work”, when the fact was, that they put a hyphen in the mobile phone input box – which seems normal to them, but you didn’t think of it. It’s those type of “non-reproducible”  errors that cause most heartache, because you can’t see them, but the client can.

With two lines of code (yes, honestly, 2), Sentry.io can capture these errors and report them on a screen that even highlights the exact line of code where the error happened. Even better than the console window.

Looks a great bit of kit!

Download link:

https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=522825951&mt=8

My second apple watch app is now available on the App store; this app allows you to read the subtitles to foreign movies on your watch, so you don’t disturb other people who are watching the film. It’s ideal if English isn’t your first language, and watching a film in English is difficult to follow. – However, you don’t want the glare of a phone to disturb other viewers.

Enjoy!

Now Live on the app store:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/get-bitcoin/id1072062149?mt=8

Yes, our first app with an Watch App extension. It lets you track the value of Bitcoin against USD at a glance. Whilst the main app on the iPhone lets you earn free bitcoin as you go. – Check out the website http://www.freebiebitcoin.com 

It took about a month to develop – on and off, of course. With some hiccups along the way;

https://blog.dotnetframework.org/2017/01/28/framework-coremedia-not-found-error-watchos-cordova/

and, some early successes – https://blog.dotnetframework.org/2017/01/08/a-simple-watchkit-app-in-objectivec/

I had said to myself that I’d get this done by the end of January, and I almost made it. Still happy. The next watchOS app should be out later this week.

I don’t normally write about objective C, since I’m not experienced in programming in that language, but I thought I’d post this really crucial, yet simple way to make a HTTP request in objective C, and get a string (NSString) back

NSString *dataUrl = @”https://yourAPI.com/something”;

    NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:dataUrl];

    NSURLSessionDataTask *downloadTask = [[NSURLSession sharedSession]

    dataTaskWithURL:url completionHandler:^(NSData *data, NSURLResponse *response, NSError *error)

    {

        if (error)

        {

           // report  error.localizedDescription to the user.

            return;

        }

        NSString *content = [[NSString alloc]

            initWithData:data

            encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

       // Now Content contains the returned data.

    }];

    [downloadTask resume];

Yes, I just discovered you can write your own WHOIS API in PHP in two lines of code;

$output = shell_exec(“whois ” . $_GET[“domain”]);
echo “$output”;

– Really easy.

So, you can call /whois.php?domain=google.com

Whois data is not very standardised, so be prepared to do a bit of parsing before you get what you need.

Want to pre-fill a contact form with the full name of the person contacting you?, got a database of email addresses that don’t include names? AvatarAPI.com solves that for you!

It’s even fun if you just want to put a face to that last email you were sent. Try it out! 🙂

We’ve now added extra sources, outside of Google, including Flickr and DandyID. Both significantly smaller than Google, but every little helps.

The DandyID API is quite niche, so I thought I’d share the c# implementation here:

var strUrl = “http://www.dandyId.org/api/return_profile/{APIKEY}/{0}/public”;
strUrl = string.Format(strUrl, email);
var wc = new WebClient { Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8 };
var strXml = wc.DownloadString(strUrl);
if (!strXml.Contains(“userId”)) throw new Exception(“DandyId lookup failed”);
var xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
xmlDoc.LoadXml(strXml);
var strRealName = xmlDoc.SelectSingleNode(“userProfile/firstName”).InnerText;
strRealName += ” ” + xmlDoc.SelectSingleNode(“userProfile/lastName”).InnerText;
var strId = xmlDoc.SelectSingleNode(“userProfile/userId”).InnerText;
var Image = “http://www.dandyid.org/beta/avatar_image/” + strId;