Javascript has always limited the ability to make arbitrary web requests to third parties, this has generally meant that projects required a server side component, even if its only purpose was to ferry data from a third party to the client.

CORS changed this somewhat, it allowed API service providers indicate to Javascript clients that it was OK for arbitrary web requests to be made to them, and the fact that any related security concerns were unimportant. – After all, any statically authenticated API would have the api key exposed in client code.

However some API providers don’t declare a CORS header. This can be down to security concerns, ignorance of Javascript clients, or just misconfiguration. That’s where a CORS proxy comes in. This is where a third party will do the connection for you, and it will declare the CORS header saying it’s OK to connect to them.

You can always develop this yourself, but a free public service is  https://cors-anywhere.herokuapp.com – which is open source on github here- https://github.com/Rob–W/cors-anywhere/

All you need to do it call https://cors-anywhere.herokuapp.com/<url> where <url> is the third party API. It passes basic authentication headers through, but you need to call it via AJAX, you can’t just paste it into a browser. This is to prevent service abuse.

Thanks Rob-W, whoever you are 🙂

We’ve just packaged our Swift Module as a Cocoapod, and listed it on Cocoapods.org, you can access the GIT repo here https://github.com/infiniteloopltd/CarRegistrationPod

CarRegistrationPod

Example

To run the example project, clone the repo, and run pod install from the Example directory first.

Requirements

A wrapper for the Car Registration API in Swift. You will require a username and password from http://www.vehicleregistrationapi.com This API returns car details from a car number plate in many countries worldwide, including the UK, USA, Australia, India. A full list is shown below.

Installation

CarRegistrationPod is available through CocoaPods. To install it, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod "CarRegistrationPod"

Usage

import CarRegistrationPod
...
let dict = australia_lookup(registrationNumber: "YHC14Y", state: "NSW", username:"***your username***", password:"*** password ***")

label.text = dict["Description"] as? String

Other members of the car_registration package are

• australia_lookup
• usa_lookup
• europe_lookup

Both australia and usa accept four parameters, registrationNumber, state, username and password, and returns a [String: Any] europe_lookup does not require the state parameter, but instead, requires a endpoint parameter, which can be one of the following strings;

• 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
• CheckUSA
• CheckAustralia

Author

Infinite loop Development ltd, http://www.infiniteloop.ie

License

CarRegistrationPod is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.

You can install two instances of SQL server on the same machine, for example if you really needed to have two different versions of SQL server, or wanted to create a logically separated database where you could keep a near-identical copy of your main database.

Anyway, for whatever reason, if you do install two instances of SQL server on one server, you will quickly find that the default port number 1433 is occupied by the first SQL server, for local connections this doesn’t cause a problem, but for remote connections it does.

First, you have to pick a new port for the named instance. Open SQL server configuration manager, then select SQL Server Network Configuration, then SQLExpress (Or whatever you named your second instance), select TCP/IP, enable it, if it isn’t already. Then right click properties. Select the IP Addresses tab, and scroll to the IP (ALL) heading, remove the 0 from TCP Dynamic ports, and enter a number such as 1444 into the TCP port box. Open up services, and restart the service associated with the SQLExpress instance.

You may now need to open up TCP port 1444 on your firewall, and adjust your connection strings to <IP Address>\<Instance Name>,1444

To help Swift developers integrate our API easily into their app, with just two lines of code, we’ve just published a wrapper for our Car Registration API on SwiftModules here

https://swiftmodules.com/infiniteloopltd/swiftcarregistrationapi

SwiftCarRegistrationAPI

A wrapper for the Car Registration API in Swift. You will require a username and password from http://www.vehicleregistrationapi.com This API returns car details from a car number plate in many countries worldwide, including the UK, USA, Australia, India. A full list is shown below.

Usage

Package.swift

import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
    name: "MyApp",
    targets: [],
    dependencies: [
        .Package(url: "https://github.com/infiniteloopltd/SwiftCarRegistrationAPI.git",
                  "1.0.1")
    ]
)

main.swift

import car_registration

let dict = australia_lookup(registrationNumber: "YHC14Y", state: "NSW", username:"***your username***", password:"*** password ***")

print(dict["Description"] ?? "error");

Other members of the car_registration package are

• australia_lookup
• usa_lookup
• europe_lookup

Both australia and usa accept four parameters, registrationNumber, state, username and password, and returns a [String: Any] europe_lookup does not require the state parameter, but instead, requires a endpoint parameter, which can be one of the following strings;

• 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
• CheckUSA
• CheckAustralia

Another language in the series, is Perl, where I’ve written some code to call the CarRegistrationAPI.com API – which is a JSON based REST API. Using Perl.

So, here is the perl module

package InfiniteLoop::CarRegistration;

use LWP::UserAgent;
use MIME::Base64;
use JSON;

use Exporter qw(import);

our @EXPORT_OK = qw(usa_lookup australia_lookup europe_lookup);

sub usa_lookup
{
my (%params) = @_;
my $server_endpoint = “https://www.regcheck.org.uk/api/json.aspx/CheckUSA/&#8221; . %params{‘registration_number’} . “/” . %params{‘state’};
%arguments = ( ‘url’ => $server_endpoint,
‘username’ => “” . %params{‘username’},
‘password’ => “” . %params{‘password’});
lookup(%arguments);
}

sub australia_lookup
{
my (%params) = @_;
my $server_endpoint = “https://www.regcheck.org.uk/api/json.aspx/CheckAustralia/&#8221; . %params{‘registration_number’} . “/” . %params{‘state’};
%arguments = ( ‘url’ => $server_endpoint,
‘username’ => “” . %params{‘username’},
‘password’ => “” . %params{‘password’});
lookup(%arguments);
}

sub europe_lookup
{
my (%params) = @_;
my $server_endpoint = “https://www.regcheck.org.uk/api/json.aspx/&#8221; . %params{‘endpoint’} . “/” . %params{‘registration_number’};
%arguments = ( ‘url’ => $server_endpoint,
‘username’ => “” . %params{‘username’},
‘password’ => “” . %params{‘password’});
lookup(%arguments);
}

sub lookup
{
my (%params) = @_;
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $encoded = encode_base64(%params{‘username’} . ‘:’ . %params{‘password’});
my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => “” . %params{‘url’});
$req->header(‘Authorization’ => ‘Basic ‘ . $encoded);
my $resp = $ua->request($req);
if ($resp->is_success) {
my $message = $resp->decoded_content;
my $json = JSON->new;
my $data = $json->decode($message);
return $data;
}
else {
print “HTTP GET error code: “, $resp->code, “\n”;
print “HTTP GET error message: “, $resp->message, “\n”;
}
}

Copy that perl module to perl/vendor

And here is a perl script to call it:

use InfiniteLoop::CarRegistration qw(usa_lookup australia_lookup europe_lookup);

### code examples

%params = ( ‘endpoint’ => ‘Check’,
‘registration_number’ => ‘Po14ryh’,
‘username’ => ‘** your username **’,
‘password’ => ‘** your password **’);

$data = europe_lookup(%params);
print $data->{Description} . “\n”;

%params2 = ( ‘registration_number’ => ‘hij934’,
‘state’ => ‘pr’,
‘username’ => ‘** your username **’,
‘password’ => ‘** your password **’);

$data2 = usa_lookup(%params2);
print $data2->{Description} . “\n”;

%params3 = ( ‘registration_number’ => ‘490JLN’,
‘state’ => ‘QLD’,
‘username’ => ‘** your username **’,
‘password’ => ‘** your password **’);

$data3 = australia_lookup(%params3);
print $data3->{Description}. “\n”;

You’ll obviously need your own username and password to call this 🙂

This code will hopefully shortly be up on Github and CPan.
 

Following on from my earlier post on making an authenticated HTTP request in GO, I’ve packaged up the code, and published it to github for Go developers to easily import a wrapper for the http://www.vehicleregistrationapi.com API into their GO code.

The Repo lives at https://github.com/infiniteloopltd/GoCarRegistrationAPI

Here’s the documentation if you want to use the code –

GoCarRegistrationAPI

A wrapper for the Car Registration API in Go. To use this package you will need a username and password from http://www.vehicleregistrationapi.com

Usage

package main
import "github.com/infiniteloopltd/GoCarRegistrationAPI"
import "fmt"

func main() {  
    data := car_registration.Australia_lookup("YHC14Y","NSW","***Your Username***","***Your Password***")
    m := data.(map[string]interface{})
    //fmt.Printf("%+v", m)
    fmt.Println(m["Description"])
}

The methods of car_registration are Australia_lookup, USA_lookup and European_lookup, all methods reuturn an interface{}, which can be cast to a string map as shown above.

Australia_lookup

Australia lookup accepts four parameters, the registration number, the state, and your username and password, in that order.

USA_lookup

USA lookup accepts four parameters, the registration number, the state, and your username and password, in that order.

European_lookup

European lookup accepts four parameters, the endpoint, the registration number, and your username and password, in that order, where the endpoint 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

Often you may want to chain HTTP requests in Swift, So, you may want to request something, then wait until that’s finished before doing something else. – for example, you may not want your terminal script to exit before the last HTTP call is made. So cobbling together a few code examples, this is what I came up with

import Foundation

extension URLSession {
func synchronousDataTask(urlrequest: URLRequest) -> (Data?, URLResponse?, Error?) {
var data: Data?
var response: URLResponse?
var error: Error?

let semaphore = DispatchSemaphore(value: 0)

let dataTask = self.dataTask(with: urlrequest) {
data = $0
response = $1
error = $2

semaphore.signal()
}
dataTask.resume()

_ = semaphore.wait(timeout: .distantFuture)

return (data, response, error)
}
}

var request = URLRequest(url: URL(string: “http://icanhazip.com&#8221;)!)

request.httpMethod = “GET”
let (data, response, error) = URLSession.shared.synchronousDataTask(urlrequest: request)
if let error = error {
print(“Synchronous task ended with error: \(error)”)
}
else {
print(NSString(data: data!, encoding: String.Encoding.utf8.rawValue) ?? “Error”)
}

Go is a programming language developed by Google, and with a name like that behind it, it’s worth learning a little about it, so, here’s a quick code example that make a HTTP get request, with basic authentication, and parses the response as a Json object.

package main

import “net/http”
import “fmt”
import “io/ioutil”
import “encoding/base64”
import “encoding/json”

func basicAuth(username, password string) string {
auth := username + “:” + password
return base64.StdEncoding.EncodeToString([]byte(auth))
}

func australia_lookup(registration_number, state, username, password string) interface{} {

url := string(“https://www.regcheck.org.uk/api/json.aspx/CheckAustralia/&#8221; + registration_number + “/” + state)
return generic_lookup(url, username, password)
}

func usa_lookup(registration_number, state, username, password string) interface{} {

url := string(“https://www.regcheck.org.uk/api/json.aspx/CheckUSA/&#8221; + registration_number + “/” + state)
return generic_lookup(url, username, password)
}

func european_lookup(endpoint, registration_number, username, password string) interface{} {

url := string(“https://www.regcheck.org.uk/api/json.aspx/&#8221; + endpoint + “/” + registration_number)
return generic_lookup(url, username, password)
}

func generic_lookup(url, username, password string) interface{} {

var client http.Client

req, err := http.NewRequest(“GET”, url, nil)
req.Header.Add(“Authorization”,”Basic “+basicAuth(username,password))

if err != nil {}
resp, err3 := client.Do(req)

if err3 != nil {}

defer resp.Body.Close()

if resp.StatusCode == 200 { // OK
bodyBytes, err2 := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
bodyString := string(bodyBytes)
var data interface{}
json.Unmarshal([]byte(bodyString), &data)
return data
if err2 != nil {}
}
return nil

}

func main() {

data := european_lookup(“Check”,”SL14MKM”,”***your username***”,”***your password***”)

m := data.(map[string]interface{})
//fmt.Printf(“%+v”, m)
fmt.Println(m[“Description”])
}

The example uses the RegCheck webservice, so you’ll need a username and password to check this out.

If you program in Rust, then you know just how useful crates are, and how they are an integral part of the language itself.

So to help Rust developers use our API, we’ve wrapped ours up in a Rust Crate that makes it super easy to call our API from your Rust code.

You can find the code documentation here: https://blog.dotnetframework.org/car-registration-api-crate-documentation/

And the link to the crate itself here:

https://crates.io/crates/car_registration

For those interested in seeing how it works under the hood, the GIT repo is public, and you can see that here: https://github.com/infiniteloopltd/RustCrateCarRegistration