Does anyone have any recommendations on geolocation web services (preferably free!)?
Planning on using it in an asp.net app, I'd heard Google might have something.
We use the Google Maps API and it's very straightforward to use. It takes some figuring out to begin with, but we were up and running using the geocoding portion in less than a day.
MaxMind is not free, but their SaaS (web service) offering is VERY reasonably priced.
I am a happy user of geocoder.us.
I'm fairly sure you are not allowed to cache google data either.
Source
you must not (nor may you permit anyone else to):
10.3 pre-fetch, cache, or store any Content, except that you may store limited amounts of Content for the purpose of improving the performance of your Maps API Implementation if you do so temporarily, securely, and in a manner that does not permit use of the Content outside of the Service;
So saving the geocoded data is probably a bit of a no-no.
However-
I have not checked but highly doubt Open Street Map have the same restrictions.
Hope that helps
We ended up using these guys in the end - dead simple HTTP API:
http://www.maxmind.com/app/web_services_city_usage
Related
With Google and other services transitioning to offer full server-side operability of their marketing & analytics products, I wonder when this functionality will arrive for Optimize?
Does anyone have any insights on that or can offer a possible workaround until it's officially supported?
The stated goal is, of course, to prevent loading third-party JS and the creation of non 1st-party cookies on a users device to enhance privacy and more easily control what data is sent where.
As I understand, server-side logic is currently limited to defining which experiment and version to show. The rest of the logic, like displaying the actual version or reporting back still require optimize.js to be implemented on the frontend.
Any help is dearly appreciated! 🙏🏼
I don't know if my app will work in China and I don't know how to test it. I had read somewhere that there's a firebase Chinese domain .cn in operation. Is there a possibility to transfer the current project to the Chinese domain and make it work, if it doesn't already?
If I create a new project and select the Chinese servers for my firebase services then will it have any other adverse consequences for the rest of the world? This solution would literally force all the developers to have the firebase servers located in China, just so they don't miss out out on their Chinese user base, which I assume could be an issue to some.
I might not have the best ideas but any suggestion and a workaround would be appreciated.
There isn't a simple way to do that. Indeed, trying to set the servers there might a be way, but it's not a guarantee, since China Firewalls are constantly changing. You can try some onlines tools as this one here to verify if your domain is blocked, by adding the URL of your application.
Besides that, the best option is the one clarified in this other post here. You would create an API in Heroku and make the data and calls from Firebase go over this API, so it would make the connection. Another option you may try is using a proxy server - as very well explained in the article Firebase: Accessing Firestore and Firebase through a proxy server - so it gets complied and it's possible to be used in China.
The usage of VPN is not a very good option, as not of them work in China and the ones that work can easily vary, also, this could impact the usability, since it might affect performance and usage for the users there.
To summarize, there isn't a specific and fully correct answer to using Firestore in China, due to the fact that updates and changes on their rules are regular, but these are some alternatives that you can give it a try. It's more about trying the one that would be less damaging for your use case.
Let me know if the information helped you!
Might be helpful for someone...
There is a Firebase alternative for China - Huawei Mobile Services. It contains services like Auth Service, Cloud Functions, Cloud DB, Crash, Push Kit, Ad Kit, and many more...
I'm using this link https://www.google.com/reader/api/0/stream/contents/feed/FEEDHERE?output=json&n=20
to fetch feeds using Google's algorithm. As you can see I'm not adding any other parameters, just fetching the returned data in JSON format. My app will be heavily used hopefully and if I send a lot of requests to this link, will Google block my access or something?
Is there anything I can include, like userip, url for my app (so if they have problem to just contact me) or something else?
The most basic answer to your question is that Google will change its Terms of Service whenever it likes, and you've got no say in the matter. So if it's allowed today, it might not be allowed tomorrow, at Google's whim.
On this issue, though, you seem fairly safe. From the Terms of Service (these is the general document, since Reader doesn't seem to have a specific one):
Don’t misuse our Services. For example, don’t interfere with our Services or try to access them using a method other than the interface and the instructions that we provide.
Google provides RSS and Atom. They provide these feeds, so I assume they expect that they'll be used. They don't say that it's a misuse to point someone else at those feeds, so it looks OK for now, but they could add such a clause at any time.
All online services are subject to the terms and conditions of the providers of those services. So, as others have said, they may be ok with your use today, but they can change their mind any time down the line. I doubt including a URL or email or contact info will help anything, because when these services change, they don't notify every user of the service, they just announce the change publicly, and usually they give several month's notice in order to give users a chance to adapt their applications, but this is not standardized or enforced so there is no guarantee. One example would be the fairly recent discontinuance of the Google Finance API (for which no replacement has been announced).
The safest approach would be to design your app such that this feature that uses google's functionality is decoupled as much as possible from the rest of your app, so that, when or if the availability of the service changes (ie it's no longer available at all) you can adapt your app to use some other source for the feeds with minimal impact to the rest of the app. Design for change and plan for the worst.
excuse me if i will sound little stupid but this thing had confused me to the core and i have been searching like crazy on net with no ultimate answer so i hope some one would shed more light on this matter.
now i wanna create a portal site and my client require that everything should be AJAX'ed so i have been playing with ASP.NET AJAX 4 and client site templating and web service, and of course the performance is great with JASON results, but my web Service code will be Public because anything available to JAVA script is available to anyone so as i read to avoid this i must :
use SSL but this is a portal site and front end should not use SSL
Authentication, will this is fine but for back-end and not front-end as login is not required.
after reading a lot as i have mentioned, i have come to the following pitfalls when using web service with AJAX and hope there is a solution or at least a way to bring more security
DOS:
i have read some articles that suggest you should throttle using IP detection and block this request for a while but here are some of the things i am worried about
will it affect search engine crawlers ?
will the hacker be able to bypass this by using proxy or other mean ?
Session HighJacking:
this is scary i still don't know how this can happen when you are using ASP.NET membership, i thought it is a pretty solid membership system!
and will a hacker be able to steal someones pass through this method?
a way to hide your code or encrypt it:
i think i am making a fool of myself here because i have mentioned that if it is public to java script then it is public to anyone, but my client would not want people to see the code writing logic and function.
Hide Webserivce:
like if you use fiddler you can see in the RAW data the path to for example www.mysite.com/toparticles/getTopArticles(10) again this scares my client and i have tried to disable WSDL and documentation in webconfig but this only blocks direct access to the file and nothing more or am i wrong! is there a way to hide the path to web service?
so all in all my top concerns is to prevent hammering any of my web services and hide my code as much as possible.
so am i to paranoid as on the front end i am going mostly to be pulling Data but again i may give user the option to save for example his widget preferences in DB, etc... and it is not gonna be through SSL thus the above security threats are valid.
i hope some one can also share his experience on this matter,
thanks in advance.
Any functionality exposed on the web is going to be, well... exposed on the web. Even if you were using pure ASP.NET with postbacks, sniffers can see the traffic and mimic the postbacks, Ajax just takes that to its logical extreme. Webservices are (for the most part) just like any other get/post system (RESTful or not).
There are some methods that you can use to secure your webservices from unauthorized access, but in truth these are the exact same things you would do to secure any other site (asp.net, traditional web, etc).
There are lots of articles all over the web about how to secure your website, and these will apply equally well to AJAX, Webservices, etc.
If you are really concerned about your webservices being publicly exposed, you can use your own custom reverse proxy to hide the services inside the customers network and only expose the proxy to the outside world. You can then secure the services so they are only accessed through the proxy and provide whatever appropriate security on the proxy you feel relevant. In this way all traffic comes through servers that you specify and is restricted (to a reasonable degree) from prying eyes. In general though I think this might be over-kill especially for a portal site.
One thing to talk with your client about is the upsell value of using webservices as a sellable product to integrators. In other words, designing the security into the webservices and using the portal only as an example of how to put it all together. A clear example of this is SharePoint, which is in truth a collection of webservices and processes and the website is really just for convenience, the power of SharePoint is in the interop of the services.
For more specific answers to your security questions, there are plenty of posts here on SO as well as the web covering each of your specific points.
We have a Microsoft web stack web site, we have a members database.
We want to start doing mass-emails to our (opted in) membership.
I don't particularly want to re-invent the wheel with a system for having a web form submit and then mass send emails looping through thousands of records without timing out and overloading the server...
I guess I'm looking for something like Mailman, that can run on a windows (ASP/ASP.NET + SQL Server) backend and do the work for me, with suitable APIs to manage the subscriber list and send emails to that list.
Suggestions please?
I agree with acrosman, third parties that host email lists are a good way to go. A very reliable site I've found for mass emailing is http://mailing-list-services.com/. They do a good job to make sure their servers are never black listed or marked as spam. I've used them a few times, their website design blows, but their service is awsome. The Lyris Listmanager software they use has a pretty extensive API.
Advanced Intellect has some great tools, like aspNetEmail and ListNanny.
MaxBulkMailer might be a solution for you? The organisation I work for uses it to connect to www.authsmtp.com which gives us credits for a certain number of e-mails that we can send per month. You can import a spreadsheet of your mailing list or tap straight into a SQL server and pull the names and addresses. Available for Mac and Windows.
(not a sales pitch)
my company offers mail manager, but it's a hosted service. It has a full API though.
You can also check out how DotNetNuke does this
Unless your running a business that specializes in email, I'd suggest you find a hosted solution. There are 100's of little issues that come up when you run your own service over time. A hosted solution can save you lots of time and effort (and therefore money).