Develop Reference

Confirm a Folder Exists on a Web Server from a C# Desktop Application

I am trying to confirm that a folder has been uploaded to my Website folder so that it can be accessed by a Desktop application. I keep getting an error that states that there is a URI format error on the connection string. There is no shortage of 'solutions' on the general internet but I cannot get anything to work, even ones on this site (of which I am a member for many years). Forward slashes, back slashes, no slashes ... on and on. I am thoroughly confused. The following seems to be a simple and correct code, but it does not work either even though it is a direct copy of a solution that was offered as correct! The passed string 's' is the name of the folder I am trying to look for. A polite simple answer, perhaps with an example, is my desperate request. Thank You.
private bool CheckFiles(string s)
{
bool exists = System.IO.Directory.Exists(#"\\\\http:/www.myserver.com/sites/"+ s);
return exists;
}

System.IO.Directory.Exists checks for a directory in the file system. The address that is provided as a parameter is a http-URL that is not supported by file system access.
If you want to check for the presence of the folder on a webserver, you need to use a http client to "talk" to the server. Send a GET or HEAD request to the URL. If this returns a 200 (ok), the folder exists, if it returns 404 (not found), it doesn't.
As you are using .NET Framework 4.5 (or 4.0), you can use WebClient or better HttpClient for this. The following should give you an idea of how to check for the folder:
using (var http = new HttpClient())
{
using (var req = new HttpWebRequest(HttpMethod.Head, "https://..."))
{
using (var resp = http.Send(req))
{
// This is a very broad condition;
// you can also check the StatusCode property against HttpStatusCode.NotFound
return resp.IsSuccessStatusCode;
}
}
}

How to customise UI for expired object in S3?

I am working in AWS S3 upload and download from bucket. After generated URL link, it is working fine. But after expired the URL, the below XML file displayed.
<Error>
<Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>Request has expired</Message>
<Expires>2017-03-31T14:49:56Z</Expires>
<ServerTime>2017-05-04T11:32:40Z</ServerTime>
<RequestId>...</RequestId>
<HostId>...</HostId>
</Error>
How to customise the above output or any other way to display as table or simply display "Expired"?

I assume that you mean to customize the above output for your application. You're not going to be able to update the error message returned back from AWS itself.
There are a few ways to go about this, but essentially, you'll need to determine if you received an error response back. From there, you can just parse it seeing as it is an XML response.
You'll of course want to catch any exceptions from parsing the XML response.
string data = #"<Error>
<Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>Request has expired</Message>
<Expires>2017-03-31T14:49:56Z</Expires>
<ServerTime>2017-05-04T11:32:40Z</ServerTime>
<RequestId>...</RequestId>
<HostId>...</HostId>
</Error>";
XDocument xdoc = XDocument.Parse(data);
if(xdoc.Descendants("Error").Any())
{
var errorMessage = from lv1 in xdoc.Descendants("Error")
select lv1.Element("Message").Value;
Console.WriteLine(errorMessage.FirstOrDefault());
}

Authenticate GET requests to files in a folder C# MVC

I have a web site (IIS, C#.Net, MVC4) where users are (forms-)authenticated and they upload media files (mostly .mp4) and authorize set of users to play back on demand. I store these files on local storage.
I play these files using jwplayer back to the authorized users on demand.
jwplayer expects I pass the url directly for it to play, but I didn't want to expose a direct url.
I really have to restrict unauthorized access to these files as they are private files.
I tried implementing a controller method to handle https://mysite/Video/Watch?VideoId=xyz, and return FileStream of the actual file. It works on a browser directly. (Though not sure how efficient it is for large files.)
But the problem is, jwplayer looks for urls of pattern http(s)://domain/path/file.mp4[?parameter1=value1&parameter2=value2 and so on.]
When I give a url like https://mysite/Video/Watch?VideoId=xyz, it says 'No playable sources found' without even sending a HEAD request.
If I expose the urls directly, the files are available for anybody to download, which will break the privacy.
Worst case, I would at least want to avoid hot links which will live for ever.
I have also looked at www.jwplayer.com/blog/securing-your-content/ but did not find the solutions suitable.
My questions are,
Is there a way I can retain the pattern of the url http(s)://domain/path/file.mp4 and still control the access to the file?
If (1.) is not possible, how do I leverage the parameters that could be passed on the url. With the parameters, I can think of signed urls. What should I do on the server if I have to provide and handle/validate signed urls.
Just not to hinder the performance, after any validation, can I somehow get the iis to handle the filestream rather my code?

I implemented an HTTPModule to allow/block access to the file. This addresses my questions 1 & 3.
Code snippet below.
void context_PreRequestHandlerExecute(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
HttpApplication app = sender as HttpApplication;
//Get the file extension
string fileExt= Path.GetExtension(app.Request.Url.AbsolutePath);
//Check if the extension is mp4
bool requestForMP4 = fileExt.Equals(".mp4", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase);
//If the request is not for an mp4 file, we have nothing to do here
if (!requestForMP4)
return;
//Initially assume no access to media
bool allowAccessToMedia = false;
//....
// Logic to determine access
// If allowed set allowAccessToMedia = true
// otherwise, just return
//....
if(!allowAccessToMedia)
{
//Terminate the request with HTTP StatusCode 403.2 Forbidden: Read Access Forbidden
app.Response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.Forbidden;
app.Response.SubStatusCode = 2;
app.CompleteRequest();
}
}

cXML PunchOutSetupRequest and PunchOutSetupResponse examples in C#

I'm trying to implement punchout catalogs on our eComm site. Honestly, the documentation for cXML is a mess and all the code examples are in javascript and/or VB.Net (I use C# and would rather not have to try and translate). Does anyone out there have examples or samples of how to receive the PunchOutSetupRequest XML and then send out the PunchOutSetupResponse XML using C#? I've been unable to find anything on the interwebs (I've been looking for two days now)...
I'm hoping I can just do this inside an ActionResult (vs. a 'launch page' as suggested).
I'm a complete noob at punchouts and could really use some help here. The bosses are being pretty pushy, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Suggestions as to how to make this work would also be much appreciated.
I apologize to all for the vagueness of the question (request).

This isn't trivial, but this should get you started.
You'll need 3 generic handlers (.ashx): Setup, Start, and Order....
Setup and Order will receive HTTP Post with content-type of "text/xml". Look at HttpRequest.InputStream if needed to get the XML into a string. From there, look at LINQ-to-XML to dig out the data you want. Your HTTP Response to both of these will also be content-type "text/xml" and UTF8 encoded, returning the CXML as documented...use LINQ-to-XML to produce that.
The Setup handler will need to validate credentials and return a URL with a unique QueryString token pointing to the Start handler. Do not expect session persistence between Setup and Start, because they're not from the same caller. This handler will need to create an application object for the token and associated data you extracted from the cXML.
The Start handler will be called as a simple GET, and will need to match the token in the QueryString to the appropriate application object, copy that data to the session, and then do a response.redirect to whatever page in your site you want the buyer to land on.
Once they populate their cart with some things, and are ready to check out, you'll take them to a page that has an embedded form (not to be confused with an ASP.Net form that posts back to your server) and a submit button (again, not an ASP.Net button). From your Setup handler, you captured a URL to point this form's Post, and within the form you'll have a hidden input tag with the UTF8 encoded CXML Punchout Order injected as the value produced with LINQ-to-XML. Highly recommend Base64 encoding that value to avoid ASP.Net messing with the tags it contains during rendering, and naming the hidden input "cxml-base64" per the documentation. The result is the form is client-side POSTed to your customer's server instead of yours, and their server will extract the CXML Punchout Order and that ends your visitor's session.
The Order handler will receive a CXML OrderRequest and just like Setup, you'll dump that to a string and then use LINQ-to-XML to parse it and act upon it. Again you'll get credentials to verify, possibly a credit card to process, and the order items, ship-to, etc. Note that the OrderRequest may not contain all the items that were in the Punchout Order, because the system on your customer's side may remove items or even change item quantities before submitting the final OrderRequest to you. The OrderRequest could come back to you after the Punchout Order is posted to them in a matter of minutes, days, weeks, or never...don't bother storing the cart data in hopes of matching it to the order later.
Last note...the buyer may be experiencing your site in an iframe embedded in their web-based procurement UI, so design accordingly.
If you need more info, reply to this and I'll get back.
Update...Additional considerations:
Discuss with the buyer how they want fault handling to flow, particularly with orders, because you have a choice. 1) exhaustively evaluate everything in the CXML you receive and return response codes other than 200 if anything is wrong, or 2) always return a 200 Success and deal with any issues out of band or by generating a ConfirmationRequest that rejects the order. My experience is that a mix of the two works best. Certainly you should throw a non-200 if the credentials fail, but you may not want (or be able) to run a credit card or validate stock availability inline. Your buyer's system may not be able to cope with dozens of possible faults, and/or may not show your fault messages to the user for them to make corrections. I've seen systems that will flat-out discard any non-200 response code and just blindly retry the submission repeatedly on an interval for hours or days until it gives up on a sanity check, while others will handle response codes within certain ranges differently than others, for example a 4xx invokes a retry, while a 5xx is treated as fatal. Remember that Setup and Order are not coming directly from the user...their procurement system is generating those internally.
Update...answering the comment about how to test things...
You'd use the same method as you will for generating outbound ConfirmationRequest, ShipNoticeRequest, and InvoiceDetailRequest, all of which generally are produced on your side after receiving an OrderRequest from your customer's procurement system.
Start with Linq-To-XML for an example of crafting your outgoing cXML (Creating XML Trees section). Combine that example with this bit of code:
StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();
XmlWriterSettings objXmlWriterSettings = new XmlWriterSettings();
objXmlWriterSettings.Indent = true;
objXmlWriterSettings.NewLineChars = Environment.NewLine;
objXmlWriterSettings.NewLineHandling = NewLineHandling.Replace;
objXmlWriterSettings.NewLineOnAttributes = false;
objXmlWriterSettings.Encoding = new UTF8Encoding();
using (XmlWriter objXmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(output, objXmlWriterSettings)) {
XElement root = new XElement("Root",
new XElement("Child", "child content")
);
root.Save(objXmlWriter);
}
Console.WriteLine(output.ToString());
So at this point the StringBuilder (output) has your whole cXML, and you need to POST it someplace. Your Web Application project, started with F5 and a default.aspx page will be listening on localhost and some port (you'll see that in the URL it opens). Separately, perhaps using VS Express for Desktop, you have the above code in a console app that you can run to do the Post using something like this:
Net.HttpWebRequest objRequest = Net.WebRequest.Create("http://localhost:12345/handler.ashx");
objRequest.Method = "POST";
objRequest.UserAgent = "Some User Agent";
objRequest.ContentLength = output.Length;
objRequest.ContentType = "text/xml";
IO.StreamWriter objStreamWriter = new IO.StreamWriter(objRequest.GetRequestStream, System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);
objStreamWriter.Write(output);
objStreamWriter.Flush();
objStreamWriter.Close();
Net.WebResponse objWebResponse = objRequest.GetResponse();
XmlReaderSettings objXmlReaderSettings = new XmlReaderSettings();
objXmlReaderSettings.DtdProcessing = DtdProcessing.Ignore;
XmlReader objXmlReader = XmlReader.Create(objWebResponse.GetResponseStream, objXmlReaderSettings);
// Pipes the stream to a higher level stream reader with the required encoding format.
IO.MemoryStream objMemoryStream2 = new IO.MemoryStream();
XmlWriter objXmlWriter2 = XmlWriter.Create(objMemoryStream2, objXmlWriterSettings);
objXmlWriter2.WriteNode(objXmlReader, true);
objXmlWriter2.Flush();
objXmlWriter2.Close();
objWebResponse.Close();
// Reset current position to the beginning so we can read all below.
objMemoryStream2.Position = 0;
StreamReader objStreamReader = new StreamReader(objMemoryStream2, Encoding.UTF8);
Console.WriteLine(objStreamReader.ReadToEnd());
objStreamReader.Close();
Since your handler should be producing cXML you'll see that spat out in the console. If it pukes, you'll get a big blob of debug mess in the console, which of course will help you fix whatever is broken.
pardon the verbosity in the variable names, done to try to make things clear.

how to know which Image has been requested C#,ASP.Net

I am developing a web app. which will generate a random link pointing to an image on my server. something like -http://dummy.com/Images/Image1.jpg?id=19234
Here this link can then be used by anybody on their site, now I just want to know how many sites are using my links, without anybody clicking on those links.
Can It be done using HTTPModule ??

Is this as simple as Googling? Search for
link:http://dummy.com/Images/Image1.jpg?id=19234
If you want to do this programmatically, you'll need to use the Google API.

The issue you'd have with an HttpHandler is that it will generally only kick in for requests that are being handled by the ASP.Net engine - the image requests will normally be handled by IIS without going through the handler.
Your web logs should be able to tell you who the referers for any given item on your servers are - assuming that you have them, and you hve something to process them - this will be more accurate than using Google.
Going forward, one of the ways I've done this in the past is to have the image generated by an HttpHandler (implementing IHttpHandler).
This will return the image as a stream (setting the content type to "image/jpeg"), and you can add further processing (such as logging where the request (referer) came from, etc).
The limitation I found with the HttpHandler, is that some services (PBBS for example) require an image link to have an image extension - I got around this by processing all 404's with an ASP.Net page that checks for the .jpg extension in the request. If it finds one, instead of returning the usual 404 page, it returns the requeted image. You'll need to configure the 404 handler in IIS though, as the web.config error handler only kicks in for ASP.Net requests (web services and .aspx type pages).
Example handler:
// Sample from the ASP.Net Personal Web Site Starter Kit
public class Handler : IHttpHandler
{
public bool IsReusable
{
get { return true; }
}
public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
{
// Set up the response settings
context.Response.ContentType = "image/jpeg";
context.Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.Public);
context.Response.BufferOutput = false;
// QueryString parameters are available here:
// context.Request.QueryString["QueryStringKey"]
// You can also access the Referrer object, and log the requests here.
Stream stream;
// Read your image into the stream, either from file system or DB
if (stream == null)
{
stream = PhotoManager.GetPhoto();
}
// Write image stream to the response stream
const int buffersize = 1024 * 16;
var buffer = new byte[buffersize];
int count = stream.Read(buffer, 0, buffersize);
while (count > 0)
{
context.Response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, count);
count = stream.Read(buffer, 0, buffersize);
}
}
}
You can have similar code (or better yet, refactor the main image streaming code into a shared class) in the 404 page, that checks for the existence of the image extension, and renders the image out that way (again, setting the content type, etc).

Oddthinking is right. See http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/#fonje_snippets or Google's API. They give examples for PHP and Java, but there are also AJAX frameworks for ASP.NET (http://www.asp.net/ajax/), and I'm sure C# as well.

You can change your image extension to an aspx extension (http://dummy.com/Images/Image1.aspx?id=19234), there is no problem in this, because this page the only thing it would do Response.OutputStream of the image. That is to say it would be similar to a jpg but with the advantage you can have some other code to process.
In this aspx (before outputing the image), we would ask about the http_referer and it would be stored in a data table if this registry does not exist.
This is really useful if for example you want to restrict the access to images. You could add some logic to forbid if they are not logged in.