Sorry, this isn't really a programming question but it's for a program I am making. My program needs to be able to upload files via many methods including HTTP, and to develop HTTP functionality I need to have a web server to post too - but the concept is failing me.
I use Mac OS X Snow Leopard but also Windows 7 in Parallels for my development - how easy would it be to create a web server in either of these OS's? Also, how does a web server become 'post-able', where I can upload to it?
Thanks
Web-servers such as Apache are available for both platforms at no cost.
To allow upload of files you need a suitable HTML file and a back-end program to handle the post request. The simplest method I have used was based on a small CGI perl script.
Google will find examples such as http://perlmeme.org/tutorials/cgi_upload.html or http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/uploading-files-cgi-perl
Related
So after beginning my azure websites-adventure, I have been encountering disappointment after disappointment to the point of 'almost' regretting taking the azure route..the latest: my app uses wkhtmltopdf(Rotativa) for all its PDF generation. And as I discovered now during my staging testing...that doesnt work. According to most info on the web, azure websites cannot run .exe's. However, most info I've seen is by now 2 years old and I know Azure development is going fast.
Is there by now a way to run wkhtmltopdf on azure websites, or a workaround atleast? I cannot really find a free alternative like wkhtmltopdf to seems to be working.(Itextsharp doesnt seem to like my html, so thats no option).
Running wkhtmltopdf is now supported in Azure Web Apps - just make sure you are using Basic, Standard, or Premium App Service Plan. Consumption Service Plan and Free App Service Plan have a more limited sandbox and are NOT supported in my testing. MS confirms supportability of wkhtmltopdf in Azure Web Apps.
Hosting - App Service Plan
There are numerous wrappers available (TuesPechkin, Codaxy, etc.). Codaxy is an EXE wrapper in .NET while TuesPechkin is a .NET wrapper around C++ runtime using P/Invoke over wkhtmltox.dll.
Running wkhtmltopdf in Azure Websites in a simple way seems to be impossible, still.
Static .NET wrappers like Pechkin wont work either in WebSites, there are very few alternatives that are 1. free and 2. dont use wkhtmltopdf or similar under the hood. Most alternatives like iTestSharp are not very advanced when it comes to html/css3/javascript reading (as I do some design changing with .js on page load).
I ended up creating a Azure Cloud Service, that runs wkhtmltopdf.exe without any issues. I send the html to the service, and get a byte[] in return. So far this seems to be working fine.
Hope this helps others with similar problems.
I've been asked to develop some software for a friend who has a business that he manages using Quickbooks Desktop. I don't have Quickbooks Desktop, and I'm not quite sure how to get started. I've read the docs for about a week now and can't seem to figure out the first step.
From what I've read, it seems like maybe the Quickbooks application starts a web server and mine application will be issuing HTTP requests against that web server ? It would be nice if I didn't have to have the Quickbooks application to do this development; is there a way to read the data file itself ? Does it cost money to develop software that uses this API ?
It looks like I would probably like to use the V2 XML protocol for what I'm trying to do which is: retrieve checks and deposits, make a monthly summary, format that summary according to his specifications, and create a PDF of the statement.
From what I've read, it seems like maybe the Quickbooks application
starts a web server and mine application will be issuing HTTP requests
against that web server ?
That's one possible way to implement things.
If you give more detail about specifically what you're trying to do (what programming language? what version of QuickBooks?) you'll probably get better recommendations than that route.
It would be nice if I didn't have to have the Quickbooks application
to do this development; is there a way to read the data file itself ?
You will have to have QuickBooks, there's no way to read the raw datafile.
It's cheap on Amazon - buy it there.
Does it cost money to develop software that uses this API ?
There are no charges while developing, and for one-off/custom/in-house integrations like you're talking about, there are no charges at all.
It looks like I would probably like to use the V2 XML protocol for what I'm trying to do which is:
Be aware that v2 and v3 is technically only for SaaS applications (e.g. you have to be reselling this as an app, and allowing many people to connect their QuickBooks to your app).
According to Intuit, you should be using the SDK.
Could you give me a tip on how can implement a rest webserver using just webbroker?
I know newer versions of delphi has this REST/JSON/DATASNAP features, but i´m stuck with BDS2006.
Basically i need to interact with other application and the guys are asking me to make this webserver application and provide just five methods over the internet/vpn. Don´t need to be running inside IIS or Apache.
I´ve googled a lot but the answers always point to 2010 and up versions. All that readings lead me to use the webappdebug template make some actions and respond to GET/POST/PUT/DELETE with some JSON objects.
The problem is ... I´m not well versed with webbroker, how can i achive this?
THANKS IN ADVANCE, ANY HELP WILL BE WELLCOME.
Our full RESTful Client-Server framework is availble, including an ORM (and much more), named mORMot.
It is an Open Source project, running from Delphi 6 up to XE2 - so it will work with Delphi 2006 (I've tested it with Delphi 7 and 2007 so I do not see any reason why BDS 2006 would fail).
It is able to serve Objects and Services (just like DataSnap) using JSON, in a secured (using per URL authentication) RESTful protocol.
It is able to use any Database engine back-end, with a SQLite3 kernel. You can even use without any database layer at all (that is without SQLite3), if you need only the RESTful services and in-memory objects feature (you can persist the objects with JSON or in binary format, but you won't be able to use advanced features like cross-table search).
More than 700 pages of documentation available.
For HTTP/1.1 communication, it is not based on WebBroker (nor IIS, nor Apache), but it will use directly the high-speed http.sys kernel-mode service.
I'm developing a tool that will comprise a central website and a desktop application. I've only really done entirely online developent, or entirely offline/client-side development before and not really had to link the two. I could use some help in how to approach passing data to/from the online site & desktop app.
The desktop app needs to communicate & do some control of iTunes, so initially I'm building this in Cocoa on OSX & making use of the ScriptingBridge framework.
On the website side I'm thinking of using Ruby on Rails, with data stored in a mySQL database, as I'm fairly familiar & seems like a good match for the online job it has to do. (But open to other suggestions if there's a better approach!)
I'm struggling to find the best approach to easily transfer data between the Cocoa app & the online rails database - is there a simple way of having the Cocoa app access the online database directly, or is it typical to dump some XML onto the webserver and have the app read that?
Opening a RESTful API on your RoR system is as simple as you can get. Have your desktop app communicate with that API using JSON or XML.
Advantages to using JSON rather than XML: (1) extremely simple to manipulate in Rails (2) extremely simple to work with in Javascript, should the need arise to build a web client in addition to the desktop one.
It's a very bad idea to have the desktop app communicate directly with your remote database. Two main reasons:
Security. Such a setup just begs to be hacked. Some databases are "built for the web" (CouchDB comes to mind) and would be alright here, but MySQL isn't.
Flexibility. With desktop application in the field, making changes and distributing them to all clients is hard. Should the need arise to change your schema, the web application layer frequently allows you to keep the interface with the desktop clients stable.
I believe that we can allow Firefox to sent NTLM data to SharePoint sites to do automatic authentication, and I think that this is doable with IIS.
I'd like to do the same thing with an internal Rails site.
Does anyone know of way that I could authenticate NTLM type user information through a Apache/mongrel setup (provided of course that it's already running on a Windows box inside of an Active Directory domain)?
I created tutorial on how to install patched mod_ntlm module for Apache on Linux and how to pass NTLM authenticated username to Rails and how create Rails session from that. So as a result you do not need Windows server for running Rails application.
There you can find also how to enable automatic NTLM authentication in Firefox — enter "about:config" in location field and then search for "network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris". There you can enter servers for which you would like to use automatic NTLM authentication.
Bit of extra info in case anyone stumbles across this.
I wanted to do something which I thought should be pretty simple - extract the users windows username using NTLM from a Rails app running on Mongrel/Windows (InstantRails actually). Having written the basic code manage the various handshaking operations (using the great NTLMRuby library at http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyntlm/) and having got it to work wonderfully in Firefox I was somewhat frustrated to find IE not working.
Mongrel doesn't support keep-alives during the type1/2/3 message exchange (at least natively, I believe there's a hack/fix for it), which IE demands and Firefox gets by without.
So authenticating a Rails server running on Windows against a remote NTLM service (e.g. Sharepoint or another web site) is reasonably straight forward, but authenticating an IE browser against a Rails server running on Windows not so much with Mongrel. IIS would be an option, as might be basic Apache with FastCGI. The former feels a bit clunky and the latter won't be as fast as Mongrel.
I'm assuming you've already worked out which HTTP headers you need to send in order to get firefox and IE to send back the NTLM authentication stuff, and are just needing to handle that on the server side?
You could use some of ruby's win32 libraries to access the underlying windows authentication functions which handle the NTLM.
I'd suggest the path of least resistance might be to see if there is a COM component which can do the authentication for you, and if so, to use it using the Win32OLE ruby library.
If there's no COM component, you might be able to find something in one of those other libraries which can invoke the native win32 methods for you.
If you can't find that, you'd have to write a ruby C extension. I've done this on linux, and extending ruby is pretty easy, but you may find the microsoft authentication API's a bit painful.
Hope that gets you started on the right track :-)
You could also use the Apache ntlm module, which should pass a header onwards to your application with the username of the authenticated user. That module looks a bit old, but suggests some other modules that may suit your needs.
Old question I know but I came across this looking for a similar answer.
you could use the methods described here (http://blog.rayapps.com/2008/12/02/ntlm-windows-domain-authentication-for-rails-application/). However mod_ntlm is for windows authentication on a UNIX/linux machine. mod_auth_sspi is what you'll need for winNT authentication from apache under windows.
This particular project looks promising and is looking for contributors:
Rack middleware for transparent authentication with NTLM.
I haven't yet tried this out. For the moment I plan on implementing Raimonds' solution as it appears to have a lot of success.
Check out Waffle. It provides SSO on Windows to Java servers using Win32 API. There're a number of implemented filters (servlet, tomcat valve, spring-security).