Jason's Code Journal

Adding Security to a WebService

My latest project involves opening up my current companies product catalog to our partners so they can display that product data on their web site. We don't want to expose this data to just anyone, and we want to set up the system to require the partner to register with us before they can use it. The idea is that once they register, they will get a username and password.

The process of adding authentication to your web service methods is pretty easy. There are four steps.

Creating a Collection using CollectionBase

In a purchase, you have to collect many different types of addresses: billing, shipping and credit. Rather than have a separate class for each address, create a single class to hold address information and include an address type. You then can create a collection of the Address objects and assign it to a customer. Here is an example:

Public Enum OrderAddressType
    Billing
    Credit
    Shipping
End Enum

Public Class OrderAddress
    Public orderAddressType As OrderAddressType
    Public strFirstName As String
    Public strMI As String
    Public strLastName As String
    Public strStreet1 As String
    Public strStreet2 As String
    Public strCity As String
    Public strStateProv As String
    Public strPostalCode As String
    Public strCountry As String
End Class

Public Class OrderAddressCollection
    Inherits System.Collections.CollectionBase

    Public Sub Add(ByVal oa As OrderAddress)
        List.Add(oa)
    End Sub

    Public Sub Remove(ByVal index As Integer)
        If index > Count - 1 Or index < 0 Then
            'ignore request
        Else
            List.RemoveAt(index)
        End If
    End Sub

    Default Public ReadOnly Property Item(ByVal index As Integer) As OrderAddress
        Get
            Return CType(list.Item(index), OrderAddress)
        End Get
    End Property

End Class

In the code above, CollectionBase was used as the base of the collection. In a simple Collection you only have the ability to identify the items in the collection by their location. If you need to identify the items in the collection by something other than the numeric index, then you have to use a DictionaryBase.

In my next post, I will give an examples of using DictionaryBase which I am working on now.

Using the HttpContext in a .Net class

Wow, three posts in one night. I've been busy tonight.

I saw a post on ASP.Net asking for an example of how to access the Request, Response, Server, Session and Application Objects in a .Net class. The answer is to use the HttpContext in you class. I thought I would post a quick example here.

Imports System.Web

Public Class MyClass
     Public Shared Sub MyFunction()
          Dim ctx As HttpContext = HttpContext.Current
          Dim strMyVar1 As String = ctx.Request("MyVar1")
          Dim strMyVar2 As String = ctx.Request("MyVar2")

End Class

It's as simple as that.