CarRegistration

This is an API Wrapper for Python for the VehicleRegistrationApi.com API which allows you to get car data from it’s number plate in many countries across the globe, from the USA, Europe, Australia, and Africa. Is is available as a package on PIP and easy_install  

An account username and password is required from VehicleRegistrationApi.com

When using the Generic “CarRegistration” function, the fourth parameter is an API endpoint, which can be one of;

• Check (UK)
• CheckBelgium
• CheckCroatia
• CheckCzechRepublic
• CheckDenmark
• CheckEstonia
• CheckFinland
• CheckFrance
• CheckHungary
• CheckIndia
• CheckIreland
• CheckItaly
• CheckNetherlands
• CheckNewZealand
• CheckNigeria
• CheckNorway
• CheckPortugal
• CheckRussia
• CheckSlovakia
• CheckSouthAfrica
• CheckSpain
• CheckSriLanka
• CheckSweden
• CheckUAE

For Australia and USA, you must also pass a state parameter, and therefore you must use the CarRegistrationUSA or CarRegistrationAustralia methods.

Installation

pip install CarRegistration

Usage (UK)

 from CarRegistration import *
 CarRegistration("BL64JTZ","***YOUR USERNAME***","***YOUR PASSWORD***","Check")

Usage (France)

 from CarRegistration import *
 CarRegistration("Eg258ma","***YOUR USERNAME***","***YOUR PASSWORD***","CheckFrance")

Usage (USA)

 from CarRegistration import *
 CarRegistrationUSA("H84jae","nj","***YOUR USERNAME***","***YOUR PASSWORD***")

Usage (Australia)

 from CarRegistration import *
 CarRegistrationAustralia("YHC14Y","NSW","***YOUR USERNAME***","***YOUR PASSWORD***")

Sample output

{u'RegistrationYear': u'2015', u'CarModel': {u'CurrentTextValue': u'208'}, u'NumberOfDoors': {u'CurrentTextValue': u'3'}, u'EngineSize': {u'CurrentTextValue': u'1397

And here’s the source code for those interested:

import urllib2, base64, json

def CarRegistration(registrationNumber, username, password):
request = urllib2.Request(“http://www.regcheck.org.uk/api/json.aspx/Check/” + registrationNumber)
base64string = base64.encodestring(‘%s:%s’ % (username, password)).replace(‘\n’, ”)
request.add_header(“Authorization”, “Basic %s” % base64string)
result = urllib2.urlopen(request)
data = json.load(result)
return(data)

If your website displays urls which are user-submitted, then you can use a free API by google called Safe Browsing (key required), to detect if these are phishing / malware urls – here is the code, with the Google API Key removed;

static bool IsMalware(string url)
{
/*
http://testsafebrowsing.appspot.com/apiv4/ANY_PLATFORM/MALWARE/URL/
http://testsafebrowsing.appspot.com/apiv4/ANY_PLATFORM/SOCIAL_ENGINEERING/URL/
http://testsafebrowsing.appspot.com/apiv4/ANY_PLATFORM/UNWANTED_SOFTWARE/URL/
*/
var strRequestJson = File.ReadAllText(“requestjson.json”);
strRequestJson = strRequestJson.Replace(“*PLACEHOLDER*”, url);
WebClient wc = new WebClient();
var strurl = “https://safebrowsing.googleapis.com/v4/threatMatches:find?key=xxxx”;
wc.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.ContentType] = “application/json”;
var strResult = wc.UploadString(strurl, strRequestJson);
if (strResult.Trim() == “{}”) return false;
return true;
}

You will also need the file requestjson.json set to copy always in the build options, with the following content;

{
“client”: {
“clientId”: “yourcompanyname”,
“clientVersion”: “1.5.2”
},
“threatInfo”: {
“threatTypes”: [ “MALWARE”, “SOCIAL_ENGINEERING” , “UNWANTED_SOFTWARE” ],
“platformTypes”: [ “WINDOWS” ],
“threatEntryTypes”: [ “URL” ],
“threatEntries”: [
{ “url”: “*PLACEHOLDER*” }
]
}
}

If you wanted to be notified as soon as a windows update is available on your server, but you don’t want it to be installed automatically, here is a script in C# that allows you to know when an update is ready.

It requires a COM library called WUApiLib which you can add via project > References

var updateSession = new UpdateSession();
var updateSearcher = updateSession.CreateUpdateSearcher();
updateSearcher.Online = false; //set to true if you want to search online
try
{
var searchResult = updateSearcher.Search(“IsInstalled=0 And IsHidden=0 And BrowseOnly=0”);
if (searchResult.Updates.Count > 0)
{
Console.WriteLine(“There are updates available for installation”);
foreach (IUpdate update in searchResult.Updates)
{
Console.WriteLine(update.Description);
foreach (string kbaid in update.KBArticleIDs)
{
Console.WriteLine(“http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=” + kbaid);
}
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message, “Error”);
}

CloudAnsweringMachine.com is a service that allows you to have a virtual answering machine attached to a real phone number practically anywhere in the world. This means that if you want to have a number that you can publish freely, without being bombarded with spam callers.

Having a virtual answering machine allows you to separate your high-priority calls from your low-priority calls, so that someone who is not in urgent need of reply, can leave a message, and you can get back to them – where your friends , family and important business partners can still contact you on your main phone line.

You can also receive text messages on your answering machine, so it can be used to activate services without disclosing your real phone number.

Up to now, we’ve had a simple pricing structure of  $15 (USD), £ 15 (GBP) or € 12 (EUR) per month, but we’ve known that certain countries have higher setup costs to provision phone lines, so we haven’t been able to offer them.

So, we’ve decided, that although most countries will still remain on the simple $15 pricing, we’ve now opened up the possibility of 33 new countries – albeit at a higher monthly cost. These premium numbers are only bookable through the website at present, but this may change in future.

Here’s the pricing table;

Singapore is a country with 5.6 million people, and is one of the most affluent city states in the world. It has a cap on the amount of new vehicles being registered in the city, but with an affluent population, and 45% car ownership, there are millions of registered vehicles in the city. If you offer a website or service to these users, then you may be interested in a car registration api for singapore at http://sg.carregistrationapi.com

Singapore support

Car registration plates in Singapore use the /CheckSingapore endpoint and return the following information:

• Make & Model
• Age
• Representative image

Sample Registration Number:

SJT8954X

Sample Json:

{
“Description”: “TOYOTA LEXUS IS250 AUTO STD FL”,
“RegistrationYear”: “2009”,
“CarMake”: {
“CurrentTextValue”: “TOYOTA”
},
“CarModel”: {
“CurrentTextValue”: “LEXUS IS250 AUTO STD FL”
},
“MakeDescription”: {
“CurrentTextValue”: “TOYOTA”
},
“ModelDescription”: {
“CurrentTextValue”: “LEXUS IS250 AUTO STD FL”
},
“TaxExpiry”: “05 Nov 2018”,
“ImageUrl”: “http://sg.carregistrationapi.com/image.aspx/@VE9ZT1RBIExFWFVTIElTMjUwIEFVVE8gU1REIEZM”
}

Twilio offer a great service in providing international phone numbers, – and it’s the provider behind CloudAnsweringMachine.com but the price varies greatly like from a $1 number in the US to a $110/month Toll free number in Bulgaria.

So, here is some code that queries the Twilio API to download all countries, and stores the pricing information in a database :

var strUrl = “https://pricing.twilio.com/v1/PhoneNumbers/Countries/?PageSize=100”;
var wc = new WebClient();
wc.Headers[“Content-Type”] = “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”;
var credentials = Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(username + “:” + password));
wc.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.Authorization] = string.Format(
“Basic {0}”, credentials);
var strCountries = wc.DownloadString(strUrl);
var jCountries = JObject.Parse(strCountries);
foreach(var jCountry in jCountries[“countries”])
{
Console.WriteLine(“Downloading ” + jCountry[“country”].ToString());
try
{
var strCountryUrl = jCountry[“url”].ToString();
var strCountryJson = wc.DownloadString(strCountryUrl);
var jCountryJson = JObject.Parse(strCountryJson);
if (jCountryJson[“price_unit”].ToString() != “USD”) throw new Exception(“Should be usd!”);
foreach (var jPhoneNumber in jCountryJson[“phone_number_prices”])
{
var strSQL = “insert into CAMPricing (country, numberType, price) values (‘{0}’,'{1}’,{2})”;
strSQL = string.Format(strSQL,
jCountryJson[“iso_country”].ToString(),
jPhoneNumber[“number_type”].ToString(),
jPhoneNumber[“current_price”].ToString());
Database.ExecuteNonQuery(strSQL);
}
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(“Failed to download ” + jCountry[“country”].ToString());
Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
}

}

And here is the pricing table correct as of time of writing:

Getting Started With SmtpJs & React

Introduction

My name is Alec Dilanchian and I am an avid programmer who enjoys working on side projects and creating cool tools. These projects all come to life on Twitch, a live streaming platform where I stream myself programming projects in 28 days from start to launch (If this sounds interesting to you, please consider checking out my stream @ https://www.twitch.tv/pixelogicdev).

I recently started a new project called FocusBlock, which can be found here. FocusBlock is an open source tool that helps you time block a task and contacts a designated person, via email, if you do not finish your task in the assigned time. Think of it like a pomodoro timer with a way to automatically gain assistance if needed. I needed a tool that would automatically send an email, via the client, if their timer ended before they finished their task. I came across SmtpJs. This component seemed straight forward and extrmemely easy to use. There was just one caveat, FocusBlock’s client side is being created with React. I wanted to keep everything as native as possible, so I challenged myself to create a very simple React component out of this awesome tool. In this article, I want to show you how easy it can be to do just this!

Download The Source Code

The component needed to get the basic logic for SmtpJs can be found @ https://wwww.smtpjs.com. When you reach the home page of the site you will want to select the “Download” button. This will download the source code needed in order for you to get started with SmtpJs. It should just be one .js file as of version 2.0.1.

Create a React Component

Once you have your source code, you are all set to get started on your React component. If you are unfamiliar with React, I would suggest checking out their guide here to gain much needed knowledge on how components work and what the library as a whole does. Do begin creating a React component, I start by adding a new folder of whatever the component will be called. In this instance I called my component SmtpService. This will hold any and all of our component logic. The next step should be straight forward. Go ahead and create a file called SmtpService.js. This will be the entry point of your component and where we will house all of its logic.

Next we will want to ge the basic layout of our React component. This is done with the following boilerplate code:

import { Component } from 'react';

class SmtpService extends Component {
    /* https://smtpjs.com/ */
    /* SmtpJS.com - v2.0.1 */
}

export default SmtpService;

Don’t forget to give credit to SmtpJs for their source code!

Add The SmtpJs Source Code

Once our barebones React component is setup, its time to add the soruce code of SmtpJs. This is as easy as copying and pasting it from that .js file you downloaded in step one. If your React app is already running, you will notice a lot of syntax errors that the linter is complaining about. Have no fear! These are easy changes that can be fixed.

Tweaking Methods

SmtpJs has multiple methods that are key for its functionality. We need to make sure we are abiding by our component’s rules and might as well convert it to JavaScript ES6 while we are at it!

I will demonstrate one method change which is identical for every other method in the code. Lets work with the send method. You are orignally given send: function (e, o, t, n, a, s, r, c) { /* Code */ );. In React, these methods are not recogonized using that syntax. To abide by ES6 and React, all you have to do is change the format to this: send = (e, o, t, n, a, s, r, c) => { /* Code */};. There is a very slight difference.

Changing var to let

This step is just a simple ES6 change. Since all of our properties are only going to be accessed within their respective methods, we want to make sure that they do not hold a global scope. At this point, change any var to let and you are golden.

A Bit of Refactoring

While the source code of the project came to us as a minified file (from the looks of it), it makes it almost illegible. For this we want to make quite a few changes. At this point in the article, I am going to just post the rest of the source code. Feel free to compare the differences! Just as a note, these changes were not React specific:

send = (e, o, t, n, a, s, r, c) => {
    let d = Math.floor(1e6 * Math.random() + 1);
    let i = `From=${e}&to=${o}&Subject=${encodeURIComponent(
        t
    )}&Body=${encodeURIComponent(n)}`;

    if (!a.token) {
        i += `&Host=${a}&Username=${s}&Password=${r}&Action=Send`;
    } else {
        i += `&SecureToken=${a.token}&Action=SendFromStored`;
        c = a.callback;
    }
    i += '&cachebuster=' + d;

    this.ajaxPost('https://smtpjs.com/v2/smtp.aspx?', i, c);
};
sendWithAttachment = (e, o, t, n, a, s, r, c, d) => {
    let i = Math.floor(1e6 * Math.random() + 1);
    let m = `From=${e}&to=${o}&Subject=${encodeURIComponent(
        t
    )}&Body=${encodeURIComponent(n)}&Attachment=${encodeURIComponent(c)}`;

    if (!a.token) {
        m += `&Host=${a}&Username=${s}&Password=${r}&Action=Send`;
    } else {
        m += `&SecureToken=${a.token}&Action=SendFromStored`;
    }

    m += `&cachebuster=${i}`;

    this.ajaxPost('https://smtpjs.com/v2/smtp.aspx?', m, d);
};
ajaxPost = (e, o, t) => {
    let n = this.createCORSRequest('POST', e);
    n.setRequestHeader('Content-type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
    n.onload = () => {
        let e = n.responseText;
        if (t) t(e);
    };
    n.send(o);
};
ajax = (e, o) => {
    let t = this.createCORSRequest('GET', e);
    t.onload = () => {
        let e = t.responseText;
        if (o) o(e);
    };
    t.send();
};
createCORSRequest = (e, o) => {
    let t = new XMLHttpRequest();
    return (
        'withCredentials' in t
            ? t.open(e, o, !0)
            : 'undefined' !== typeof XDomainRequest
                ? (t = new XDomainRequest()).open(e, o)
                : (t = null),
        t
    );
};

Send An Email

Once you are done with your component, you are free to utilize it like any other React component. Import it where you need it, and then use it:

import SmtpService from 'My/File/Path/SmtpService';

...

sendEmail = () => {
    let sender = new SmtpService();
    sender.send(...);
};

Conclusion

I want to give a huge shout out to the folks who created SmtpJs and thank them for the awesome and light weight component they had created to send out emails through the client side. I had a blast converting this into a React component and I hope this has helped get you started! I do want to inform you that there are many more changes that can be made to make this an even better component, but I will leave that up to you!

Please feel free to get in contact with me about this or anything else through:
Twitch
Twitter
Email

***********

Thanks Alec for this great guest post, if you’d like to appear in this blog with some tips and tricks on SMTP.JS or another of our components, then drop us a comment or email.

If you run a platform in Stripe, then you are ultimately accountable for the accounts that you connect on the platform. So if you get a few bad apples, you need to find a way to weed them out.

Lets start with some code to list all connected accounts:

publicstaticstring ListAllConnectedAccounts()

{

// https://api.stripe.com/v1/accounts

var wc = new WebClient();

string strResult;

try

{

ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = (SecurityProtocolType)3072;

var myCreds = new NetworkCredential(SecretKey, “”);

wc.Credentials = myCreds;

conststring strUrl = “https://api.stripe.com/v1/accounts?limit=100”;

wc.Headers[“Content-Type”] = “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”;

strResult = wc.DownloadString(strUrl);

}

catch (WebException ex)

{

strResult = new StreamReader(ex.Response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();

}

return strResult;

}

publicstaticstring ListCustomerDisputes(string stripeAccount)

{

// https://api.stripe.com/v1/disputes?limit=100

var wc = new WebClient();

try

{

ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = (SecurityProtocolType)3072;

var myCreds = new NetworkCredential(SecretKey, “”);

wc.Credentials = myCreds;

conststring strUrl = “https://api.stripe.com/v1/disputes?limit=100”;

wc.Headers[“Stripe-Account”] = stripeAccount;

wc.Headers[“Content-Type”] = “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”;

return wc.DownloadString(strUrl);

}

catch (WebException ex)

{

return new StreamReader(ex.Response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();

}

}

Closures are quite an advanced feature of Javascript, but you really need to understand them whenever you need to do things like looping through asynchronous operations.

A typical use case is if you wanted to do many Ajax calls in a loop, and you find that the wrong variable value gets sent through, because by the time the Ajax returns the loop has already completed.

Here is a simplified example to demonstrate the problem, I’m using setTimeout instead of Ajax, to make the code more simple;

var arr = [1,2,3,4,5];

for(var i in arr)
{
setTimeout(function()
{
console.log(arr[i])
}, 500);
}

You may think, on first glance, that this code is going to create the output 1 2 3 4 5, but instead, it actually outputs 5 5 5 5 5 ? – here’s the solution:

for(var i in arr)
{
(function(i){
setTimeout(function()
{
console.log(arr[i])
}, 500)})(i);
}

Here, the setTimeout is wrapped in a (function(i){ … })(i) closure, which copies the value of i to the local scope of an inner function. so “i” inside the closure is of different scope to “i” in the for loop, and is in fact a different variable in memory.

A list of common SMTP servers and their SMTP Port and SSL settings from SMTPJS