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  1. C# is Case-Sensitive

    Wednesday, March 10 2010 by

    C# is case-sensitive. C# is case-sensitive. C# is case-sensitive.

    I have to keep reminding myself of this.

    I'm not used to case-sensitivity yet and it continues to challenge me.

    Wednesday, March 10 2010 by | 0 comment(s)
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  2. Securing ASP.Net Pages - Forms Authentication - C# and .Net 4

    Monday, February 15 2010 by

    ASP.Net has a built-in feature named Forms Authentication that allows a developer to easily secure certain areas of a web site. In this post I'm going to build a simple authentication sample using C# and ASP.Net 4.0 (still in beta as of the posting date).

    Security settings with ASP.Net is configured from within the web.config file. This is a standard ASCII file, with an XML format, that is located in the root of your web application. Here is a sample web.config file: 
    <configuration>
        <system.web>
            <authenticationmode="Forms">
                <formsname="TestAuthCookie"loginUrl="login.aspx"timeout="30">
                    <credentialspasswordFormat="Clear">
                        <username="user1"password="pass1"/>
                        <username="user2"password="pass2"/>
                    </credentials>
                </forms>
            </authentication>
            <authorization>
                <denyusers="?"/>
            </authorization>
            <compilationtargetFramework="4.0"/>
            <pagescontrolRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5"clientIDMode="AutoID"/>
        </system.web>
    </configuration>
     
    The very first line is standard for a web.config file and has no bearing on the security.
     
    The next section specifies that you are configuring the security for this web application. First we set the authentication mode to use a cookie in this specific example. You can specify a unique name for your cookie. This section also specifies the page or URL that will contain the authentication code (login.aspx in this case) and how long the authentication cookie should be persisted.
     
    The next two lines specify valid usernames and passwords for this web application. As far as I know there is no limit to the number of user accounts you can place in the web.config, but if there were a large number - or if they change frequently - it might be better to place this information in an external file like a database or an XML file instead (I'll show this in a future article).
     
    Now that we have specified some valid logon accounts, we need to actually specify that we want to password protect. For this example I have decided to password protect the entire web site starting at the root, so the optional <location> attribute will not be used. We set the authorization to deny all non-authenticated users (deny users="?").
     
    That's all that is needed for the config.web file. If someone tries to access the site and the user has not already authenticated, they will be redirected to the login.aspx page.
     
    This is only half the required process though. We now need to create the login.aspx page to actually allow the user to authenticate to our application.
     
    Here is the complete source of the sample login.aspx page
     
     
    <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="login.aspx.cs" %>
     
    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
     
    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <head runat="server">
        <title></title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <form id="form1" runat="server">
        <div>
            Username:
            <asp:TextBox ID="username" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
            <br />
            Password:
            <asp:TextBox ID="password" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
            <br />
            <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" onclick="Button1_Click" Text="Login" />
            <br />
            <br />
            <asp:Label ID="status" runat="server" Text="Please login"></asp:Label>
        </div>
        </form>
    </body>
    </html>
     
    And here is the complete source of the login.aspx.cs file:
    using System;
    using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
    using System.Web.Security;
     
    public partial class Default3 : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (FormsAuthentication.Authenticate(username.Text, password.Text))
            {
                status.Text = ("Welcome " + username.Text);
                FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage(username.Text, true);
            }
            else
            {
                status.Text = "Invalid login!";
            }
     
        }
    }
     
    Let's look at the login.aspx page first. This is fairly straight-forward HTML format. These aren't actually straight HTML tags, but rather ASP.Net HTML controls that will render HTML page to the client browser (you can tell the difference because the runat="server" tag at on the control). This is a form that accepts a username and password. When the submit button is clicked, this page executes the code within the login.aspx.cs page located in the subroutine named "Button1_Click".
    Inside the Button1_Click method we use the FormsAuthentication object. The first line of the sub actually passes the entered username and password over to the object, which in turn compares this information to the values in the web.config file. If the values match, then the next line changes the label (just so we can see visually that it worked) then writes a cookie to the browser and redirects the user back to the original URL which was requested. The second value listed ("true") tells the browser to persist the cookie. So if this user authenticates, closes their browser, opens it again, and tries the secure URL - they will still be authenticated.
    If the username and password entered did not match, an error message is displayed to the screen and the visitor is allowed to enter a new username and password to try again.
    This is a simple example and I don't cover any of the advanced configurations or options, but with this sample code, you should have a basis to work with if you want to implement security in ASP.Net
     

    Monday, February 15 2010 by | 0 comment(s)
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  3. Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries

    Wednesday, February 10 2010 by

    Someone pointed out my old-school VB naming conventions in a recent C# sample code post and provided some pointers and some suggested reading. I've named objects the same way for so long that I'm sure I'll struggle with the changes, but I took the pointers to heart and will work to adjust my naming conventions moving forward. I haven't read through the link provided yet, but figured I'd share it here (its from MSDN).

    He also mentioned that the comments button isn't currently working, which explains why comments have totally dropped off - someone here is looking into that issue to see why it broke and will hopefully have it working again shortly.

    Update: Here is another link I was just reading about Pascal Case and Camel Case use in C# programming:
    http://cplus.about.com/od/learnc/ss/csharpclasses_5.htm

     

    Wednesday, February 10 2010 by | 0 comment(s)
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  4. Sending email from ASP.Net 4 - C# sample code

    Monday, February 08 2010 by

    (I updated the code sample based on feedback about C# naming standards and leveraging iDisposable - which I'm sure I'll forget many times until I get comfortable more with C#.)

    Below is sample code showing how to send email from ASP.Net 4 (currently in beta as of this posting) using C#. With this code I am assuming that the server already has a local SMTP service installed, so I use "localhost" to relay the email.

    Here is the SendMail.aspx page:

     

    <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="SendMail.aspx.cs" Inherits="SendMail" %>

     

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

     

    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

    <head runat="server">

        <title></title>

    </head>

    <body>

        <form id="form1" runat="server">

        <div>

            Message to:

            <asp:TextBox ID="to" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>

            <br />

            Message from:

            <asp:TextBox ID="from" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>

            <br />

            Subject:

            <asp:TextBox ID="subject" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>

            <br />

            Message Body:

            <br />

            <asp:TextBox ID="body" runat="server" Height="171px" TextMode="MultiLine"

                Width="270px"></asp:TextBox>

            <br />

            <asp:Button ID="sendMail" runat="server" onclick="SendMail_Click"

                Text="Send Email" />

            <br />

            <br />

            <asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label>

        </div>

        </form>

    </body>

    </html>

     

    Here is the source code of the SendMail.aspx.cs page:

    using System;

    using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

    using System.Net.Mail;

     

    public partial class SendMail : System.Web.UI.Page

    {

        protected void SendMail_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

        {

            using (MailMessage mailItem = new MailMessage(

                from.Text, to.Text, subject.Text, body.Text))

            {

                SmtpClient smtpServer = new SmtpClient("localhost");

                try

                {

                    smtpServer.Send(mailItem);

                }

                catch (Exception ex)

                {

                    Label1.Text = ex.ToString();

                }

            }

        }

    }

     

     

    Monday, February 08 2010 by | 0 comment(s)
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  5. How to install SMTP on Windows Server 2008

    Thursday, February 04 2010 by

    The SMTP services are not installed by default on Windows Server 2008. To install that service, follow these steps...

    First go to the Features Summary section of the Server Manager and click Add Features.

    Server Manager Features Summary

    Then scroll down and select the SMTP Server option from the list.

    Once you click the SMTP Server option, you'll get a dialog box showing the other roles and features required for the SMTP service to work.

    Click Add Required Role Services then Next on the three subsequent dialog boxes. You're then presented with a summary and an Install button. Click Install and all the required services will be installed to support SMTP on the server.

     

    Thursday, February 04 2010 by | 0 comment(s)
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  6. C# = or ==

    Wednesday, January 27 2010 by

    I learned my second key C# item just now ... Using = means an assignment. Using == means a comparison.

    So...

     Label1.Text == "Yes!"

    ... means DOES label1.text equal "Yes!"

    and...

     Label1.Text = "Yes!"

    ... means assign label1.text equal to "Yes!"

    It's very helpful to know these little things. :-)
     

    Wednesday, January 27 2010 by | 0 comment(s)
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  7. Authoring Sidebar Gadgets in C#

    Wednesday, February 14 2007 by

    Very cool post today at nikhilk.net about using Script# to be able to author sidebar gadgets in C#. Check it out:

    http://www.nikhilk.net/Entry.aspx?id=153




    Wednesday, February 14 2007 by | 0 comment(s)
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