Network Programming in .NET

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;

Has your website been hacked?, has your server crashed?, lost your backups?

This service allows you recover your website instantly from a cached copy held at the Internet Archive. This allows you get an old version of your website back online while you fix the problem with your server.

Just the thing to have close at hand during a server emergency WebserverDown.com

Apple has just approved version 1.4 of our VAT App, which is available here;

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/vat/id524680827?mt=8&at=1000l9tW

It not only allows you to verify a VAT number, but also search for one based on the name of company, and/or a partial address. Thanks to http://www.vatapi.co.uk/  – an API we’ve created that lets you search automatically for company VAT numbers in most European countries.

Hope you like the app!

[Error] Refused to load gap://ready because it appears in neither the child-src directive nor the default-src directive of the Content Security Policy.

I noticed in an app I just updated, that the phonegap plugins were not working, (i.e. InAppBrowser), but deviceReady was getting called, so it it was ‘sort of’ working.

When I attached the remote debugger to the app from Safari I saw the error above in the console window being fired  over and over again.

The fix was to relax the CSP in the index.html, by adding

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Security-Policy” content=”default-src ‘self’ gap://ready file://* *; style-src ‘self’ ‘unsafe-inline’; script-src ‘self’ ‘unsafe-inline’ ‘unsafe-eval'”>

You have to make sure you only have one CSP meta tag, as it will only use the first one.

Let’s say you wanted to create a HTTP endpoint that could respond with data that is completely generated from a c# class, and independent of the structure of the Url – for example, if you wanted to create a REST based HTTP API, that could accept a very flexible Url structure.

For example, perhaps a API that allowed it’s users to specify clauses in the URL, like yourapi.com/filter/a=5 or something like that.

Anyway, you create a class that implements IHTTPHandler as follows;

using System;
using System.Web;
public class CacheModule : IHttpModule
{
public void Init(HttpApplication application)
{
application.BeginRequest += application_BeginRequest;
}
static void application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var application = (HttpApplication)sender;
var context = application.Context;
context.Response.Write(“<b>Cache Module</b> – Requested url:” + context.Request.Url);
HttpContext.Current.Response.Flush(); // Sends all currently buffered output to the client.
HttpContext.Current.Response.SuppressContent = true; // Gets or sets a value indicating whether to send HTTP content to the client.
HttpContext.Current.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest();
}
public void Dispose() { }
}

Then you need to define this in the web.config;

<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<configuration>
<system.web>
<compilation debug=”true” targetFramework=”4.5″ />
<httpRuntime targetFramework=”4.5″ requestPathInvalidCharacters=”&lt;,&gt;,*,%,&amp;,:,\,?”/>
</system.web>
<system.webServer>
<modules>
<add name=”CacheModule” type=”CacheModule“/>
</modules>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>

You have to make sure that all your icons for the WatchOS app (you drag the images into the Assets.XCassets file in XCode) match the required dimensions and are named WIDTHxHRIGHT@SCALEx.png. Make sure the images have no alpha channel, so export to web on Photoshop, and select No transparency, 8 bit PNG.

If you wanted to determine what host name an IIS website responded to dynamically, then you can use Microsoft.Web.Administration to do this. You need to run your application pool under localSystem privileges, so it’s perhaps not advisable to do on a public-facing website.  You can find the DLL at Windows\system32\inetsrv

This little POC page, lists all sites on my local dev IIS, and then adds a new random binding to a site named “localhost90”

using (ServerManager serverManager = new ServerManager())
{
foreach (var site in serverManager.Sites)
{
Response.Write(site.Name);

// add a random binding
if (site.Name == “localhost90”)
{
Random rnd = new Random();
int intRandomPort = rnd.Next(100, 1000);
Binding binding = site.Bindings.CreateElement(“binding”);
binding[“protocol”] = “http”;
binding[“bindingInformation”] = “:” + intRandomPort + “:”;
site.Bindings.Add(binding);
serverManager.CommitChanges();
}

Response.Write(“<br>”);
Response.Write(“<ul>”);
foreach (var binding in site.Bindings)
{
Response.Write(“<li>” + binding.EndPoint + “</li>”);
}
Response.Write(“</ul>”);

}
}