Tag Archives: winforms
UDP hole punching implementation in C#
UDP hole punching is a method that is used to establish connectivity between two hosts that are behind a NAT (router) without the need of having the clients port forward specific ports.
When the client sends a UDP packet to the server the router creates a temporary rule mapping, the server then uses the incoming IP address and port it receives the message from to send a message to the client, which refreshes (in most cases) the lifetime of the temporary mapping on the client’s router and allows the server to communicate constantly with the client without the need for the user to do anything from their side.
This method is also used to send messages between two users that are behind different NAT’s. The difference in the implementation is that the clients first contact with the server, which should have a port open in order to be able to receive the information from the clients. After the server receives the information from the clients it sends each client the IP and port of the other client, allowing both of them to communicate with each other.
I’ve created a small example on how the implementation of a UDP hole punching looks in C#, this should give you the general idea of how it works and let you expand it as you like. The example simply receives a message from the client then sends a response. If you want the server to handle more than one message then you will need to add some loops.
How to hash a string with salt using a multi-algorithm method
It is considered a very bad idea to store user credentials in plain text, especially passwords. For that very reason it is always a good idea to hash passwords before you store them, ideally with a unique salt that you can store in another location. That way if for whatever reason your database is compromised your users passwords will not be in plain text and it will require a bit of work in order to find out what each password is, especially if the salt for each password is stored somewhere else.
The following method is a multi algorithm method, that means that with this single method you can use more than one algorithm to hash your data. The snippet below shows an example how to hash your data with a single method using seven different algorithms.
Our main method that will do all the work for us:
1 2 3 4 5 6 | private string StringToHash(string data, string salt, HashAlgorithm algorithm) { byte[] saltedBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data + salt); // Combine the data with the salt byte[] hashedBytes = algorithm.ComputeHash(saltedBytes); // Compute the hash value of our input return BitConverter.ToString(hashedBytes); } |
Host a process window inside your applications window
The following snippet will allow you to host the window of any application inside your own application. This isn’t a recommended practice but it’s a fun method that might spawn some interesting ideas.
In order to get this working we will need to pinvoke two Win32 functions, SetParent and SetWindowPos.
Place the following lines in your class
1 2 3 4 | [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)] private static extern IntPtr SetParent(IntPtr hWndChild, IntPtr hWndNewParent); [DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint = "SetWindowPos")] public static extern IntPtr SetWindowPos(IntPtr hWnd, int hWndInsertAfter, int x, int Y, int cx, int cy, int wFlags); |
Shortening a URL using bitly’s API in C#
Using the snippet below you can convert links in your application from this
1 | http://www.fluxbytes.com/ |
to this
1 | http://bit.ly/WVk1qN |
This is especially important in cases where you have a fairly long URL which you want to post somewhere and you either don’t want to use such a long URL, or simply you are limited by characters. An example of that situation would be a URL such as
1 | http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=c+sharp+convert+string+to+binary&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fluxbytes.com%2Fcsharp%2Fconvert-string-to-binary-and-binary-to-string-in-c%2F&ei=T79SUcOVI4rEPOeogPgP&usg=AFQjCNEihqo_KsRZuGpb0-ZpWdqjdqr_sA |
which can be shortened down to
1 | http://bit.ly/WVuXF4 |
The first thing you are going to need it an account from bitly.com. After you have created an account, log in and navigate to https://bitly.com/a/your_api_key. The page will contain your username and your API key which are both needed.
Convert string to binary and binary to string in C#
The following two snippets allow you to convert a string to binary text and also to convert binary back to string.
String to binary method:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | public static string StringToBinary(string data) { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); foreach (char c in data.ToCharArray()) { sb.Append(Convert.ToString(c, 2).PadLeft(8, '0')); } return sb.ToString(); } |
Binary to string method:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | public static string BinaryToString(string data) { List<Byte> byteList = new List<Byte>(); for (int i = 0; i < data.Length; i += 8) { byteList.Add(Convert.ToByte(data.Substring(i, 8), 2)); } return Encoding.ASCII.GetString(byteList.ToArray()); } |
Usage:
1 2 3 4 5 | // returns "01100110011011000111010101111000011000100111100101110100011001010111001100101110011000110110111101101101" StringToBinary("fluxbytes.com") // returns "fluxbytes.com" BinaryToString("01100110011011000111010101111000011000100111100101110100011001010111001100101110011000110110111101101101"); |
Posted in C#.
Tagged binary, binary to string, C#, csharp, snippet, string to binary, winforms
