I want to create a program in which a user enters data and saves it on a text file. For example they enter a name and their age and it saves it and loads it. The thing is that i want this program to be available to the user at all times on any computer which means having the program online.
Do i need to make the program have networking capabilities? Or can i just have a server or host computer to hold the program and have the client access that directly?(like using the spreadsheets from google).
I don't know what you mean by "do I need to make the program have networking capabilities". If you choose to avoid the web site route then you need to have a server and client side app. If you want the program to be able to save data to a server then you need to do some socket programming.
To create a server, you need to:
create a socket
bind the socket to an address and port
listen for incoming connections
wait for clients
accept a client
send and receive data
To create a client, you need to:
create a socket
connect to a server
send and receive data
Hope this helps!
There are may ways to accomplish your goal, but the route that is probably easiest and most useful is to create a web page that implements this functionality.
Some of the many benefits include
No special software to install. Just requires a web browser.
Runs on any platform (including mobile) that has a web browser.
No software updates to push out to users. Update your website, and everyone gets the latest code.
Related
I'm facing a challenging problem here that don't know how to resolve:
Context: I have a game launcher that connects to my server and if doesn't detect any cheating software on the player computer, launches the game and tells the server to allow that IP to connect to the game server.
This has many potential issues like if there are multiple players under the same IP but I make a queue in that case so all is fine until here.
Now the main problem is that I don't have control over what information sends the game, I can only modify the launcher. For this reason all is IP based as that's the only way I have to identify that a certain player is logging in and has been authorised by launcher. It goes:
Launcher connects to Server and tells him to Allow IP A.
Server replies: ok (save IP A)
Launcher starts game.
Player tries to login.
A connection is established to the server, server checks if origin IP (IP A) is allowed to log in, if yes, go ahead.
So, the system even though far from ideal, does the job, and considering game is compiled and we cannot modify it, I couldn't think of better way.
Anyway now we come to the problem:
Certain players, when they open the launcher, all goes fine, game launches but then when player tries to login server denies connection as it comes from a different origin IP!
That broke up my mind, how can two tcp connections made within a few seconds of difference from client A to server B have a different client source IP? obviously this ruins all my system. I even tried to periodically fetch IP from sites like whatismyip to see if it was changing overtime but it wasn't the case, it seems like maybe because it goes to another port, or I don't know the reason, sometimes changes it and sometimes it doesn't.
It seems to be related to players being using tethering internet connections,as I e never seen this before on a common internet connection.
So basically, I'm not sure what could I do to identify/relate those two connections and this is a big problem as many players are unable to join my game and I cannot let them join without the launcher for obvious reasons.
My random ideas to resolve it range from bad to terrible:
open multiple connections to server on different ports and see if that gives different source iOS
let player connect and then do some kind of validation based on netstat check on client: when player is connected to game server I should see it there and could send that info to server, server would kick any client connected if there's no validation from launch, however, I think I would still have the problem to link both connections.
maybe there's another way that I'm not aware of to identify this connections. Assume I have full control in server side and in launcher, but I cannot change the game server packet that does the "login" attempt.
Based on your assumptions (IP-based only, game/server unmodifiable), it looks like we are hitting a wall indeed..
For the moment the only thing that comes to mind is performing multiple requests to the server instead of one, and until the user finally logs in.
I mean:
Periodically: launcher connects to server and tells him to Allow current IP. Server saves this IP and hopefully at some point you will have discovered all IPs.
Do this in the backgound until the player is finalizing its login (or a fixed period of time)
With some luck, if you open multiple connections during the whole period of time needed to start the game and login, you will have discovered and allowed all IPs of the user. This will mitigate the issue but not eliminate it.
I'll edit this post if I think about something else.
I need to stream several "channels" (by channels I'm thinking of radio channels, so playlists might be more appropriate) of queued MP3 files to around 200 clients over the internet from a Windows 2008 R2 / IIS 7 web server. Encryption of the stream is not a requirement.
I need some way to ensure each client can only stream one channel at a time. I was thinking of restricting by IP address, and would welcome any suggestions on how I might go about this, or if there may be a better way.
For my clients I assume I'd need a player on the client end that could facilitate "logging in". Ideally I would be able to stream to windows xp/7/8, mac and android clients.
I would need to be able to log in remotely and control each channel / playlist from a finite list of MP3 files hosted on the web server.
I'm wondering if there any off the shelf products that I could use to do this. If not, I'm stuck on what would be the best way to go about this.
I've briefly read up on shoutcast, auto dj, streamcast and ice cast, but I don't have any experience with these solutions, and can't find any information about how to implement the security requirements I have (limiting access to one stream per client / ip address).
IP addresses do not uniquely identify users. There are plenty of situations where NAT comes into play, and you can have hundreds of users all behind the same public IP address.
What you need to do is have another method for identifying users. Assuming you don't want to require accounts, you can use a session ID.
Basically, you assign an ID with a cookie to a browser. When the user clicks a link to launch their audio player, the session ID is passed in the URL to the stream. With this method, it doesn't matter if the browser itself or a separate audio player is used to play the stream. It is up to the streaming server to then accept or reject the request.
It is common to accept any new request and disconnect the old when a new stream starts. Icecast doesn't support this sort of thing natively, but it does provide an API of sorts with the admin interface that you can use from your own scripts to get this behavior.
Alternatively, I have written a server called AudioPump that provides similar functionality. It isn't generally available yet, but please contact me at brad#audiopump.co if you're interested.
I'm not sure if I'm asking the question properly. I'm referring to locally installed software, often called an "Agent" that keeps in regular communication with some host via HTTP. e.g. When you install LogMeIn, the Agent keeps in communication with the logmein.com server so that when you visit logmein.com with your web browser and connect to the agent, the server is able to initiate communication. The Agent, however, isn't a webserver, nor are any ports forwarded to the Agent. So, is the Agent constantly polling the server asking like a broken record, "Can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you?" Or is the http connection from Agent to server somehow kept open? I know you can keep an http connection open, but A) how, and B) for how long? Does the Agent need to act like a less annoying broken record asking, "Can I help you? Yet? Yet? Yet?" with much more time in between each question? Or can the Agent ask once and wait indefinitely, asking again only once it learns that the connection has been dropped?
Bottom line is, I'd like to create a small little sample program for trying my hand at writing a client/server application that communicates via the Internet using HTTP. Either side needs to be able to initiate commands / requests. The Agent would likely communicate with the Server using some sort of API, perhaps RESTful. When I start the experiment, I'll be using Perl. It'd be fun to create a Hello World project that would have samples in many languages for many platforms how to write the agent and how to communicate with the server. The agent code would do client side things (e.g. determine public IP address) and send the data to the server. The server would act on the data (e.g. store IP address in a database). The server might also initiate a command to the Agent (e.g. Hey, Agent! What's your CPU type?) Proper authentication / authorization between Agent and Server is of course a necessity.
Are there any existing projects to model off of? Any existing documents? Perhaps I'm just missing terminology and if I just knew that everything I was asking can be summarized by the term foo, then the doors would be opened wide for what I could find in searches!
I looked into the code of Ubuntu's Landscape. It uses Python's Twister -- a web server for HTML5 Websockets. So I'd say what I was looking for in an answer is Websockets (bi-directional communication). That now has opened up a wealth of options, node.js, twister, mojolicious, and many many more as web servers. Turns out using Ajax to poll every few seconds is a very bad idea -- an overwhelming slam on web servers. Keep the connection open.
I would like to write an application to manage files, directories and processes on hundreds of remote PCs. There are measurement programs running on these machines, which are currently managed manually using TightVNC / RealVNC. Since the number of machines is large (and increasing) there is a need for automatic management. The plan is that our operators would get a scriptable client application, from which they could send queries and commands to server applications running on each remote PC.
For the communication, I would like to use a TCP-based custom protocol, but it is administratively complicated and would take very long to open pinholes in every firewall in the way. Fortunately, there is a program with a built-in TinyWeb-based custom web server running on every remote PC, and port 80 is opened in every firewall. These web servers serve requests coming from a central server, by starting a CGI program, which loads and sends back parts of the log files of measurement programs.
So the plan is to write a CGI program, and communicate with it from the clients through HTTP (using GET and POST). Although (most of) the remote PCs are inside the corporate intranet, they are scattered all over the country, I would like to secure the communication. It would not be wise to send commands, which manipulate files and processes, in plain text. Unfortunately the program which contains the web server cannot be touched, so I cannot simply prepare it for HTTPS. I can only implement the security layer in the client and in the CGI program. What should I do?
I have read all similar questions in SO, but I am still not sure what to do in this specific situation. Thank you for your help.
There are several webshells but as far as I can see ( http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mressl/webshell/features.html ) they run on the top of an existing SSL/TLS layer.
There is also S-HTTP.
There are several ways of authenticating to an server (username/passwort) in a protected way, without SSL. http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/secure-authentication-without-ssl-using-javascript . But these solutions are focused only on sending a username/password to the server.
Would it be possible to implement something like message-level security in SOAP/WS-Security? I realise this might be a bit heavy duty and complicated to implement, but at least it is
standardised
definitely secure
possibly supported by some libraries or frameworks you could use
suitable for HTTP
First of all thanks for taking the time to read my question. Here is what I am trying to accomplish followed by what I have so far on this.
What I want to do is create a Windows application (or server of sorts) that would listen for requests from an ASP.NET application. The windows application would be installed and would listen for messages from ASP.NET application and then do some processing. The flow is like this:
A user downloads the desktop application and registers their IP address on my web site. After downloading the desktop app, the ASP.NET application can then send requests to that particular desktop client for further processing. I think further processing is independent of the resolution in this case that's why i have skipped over details on what processing would be done. But if you think it is important, please let me know and I will add those details as well.
I have looked into creating a TCP server that would listen for requests. Because the user has already registered their IP address on my web site, my web site assigns them a unique identifier and stores the ID alongwith IP address in database. Now, the ASP.NET site can send requests to that desktop application.
I have looked into creating a TCP server for this purpose. While researching I also came across PNRP and it seems something like what I am trying to do.
Can you guys recommend some solutions or where I should be looking at for this scenario? Should I create a simple TCPLISTENER or may be go with PNRP approach? Or something else?
The basic requirement is for a web application to be able to communicate with a desktop application. The web application would be servicing numerous users and each user would have a desktop application installed. Which user for which desktop client question would be addressed by the web application that would maintain a database of unique user id's and their corresponding IP Address.
Thanks in advance for your help.
You could use .NET remoting or a web-service in the desktop app. Use WCF or WSE for the latter. You can use COM to add windows firwall rules.
Whatever you do, take firewalling/NAT into account. It might be easier for the client application to poll the server (initiate the connection) otherwise you open a can of worms by trying to have a remotely-accessible server in your user's computer without having to do some very manual configurations on the user's networking equipment.
Once you have that part sorted out, what I used in your situation was .NET Remoting. At the time WCF had not come out and when it did it was to crippled for my needs. TCP IP sockets were too raw (I had to write too much code) and so Remoting solved my problem ideally (a hand full lines of code to set up the connection, and everything was automatic from there on).
EDIT: I use an excellent third party library that makes Remoting even more flexible (flexible enough that I am still waiting for WCF to catch up with the featureset so that I stop using Remoting, and no luck yet!). Check out http://www.genuinechannels.com/ to see all the features they have. It includes making calls from server to client, and that sounds exactly like what you need to do. Check it out.