Misc : Damn, I’ve been a busy little elf!

 

Enjoy!

stackoverflow : The forum double

In cricket, we have the concept of the “all-rounder’s double” for cricketers who have scored 1000 runs and taken 100 wickets or whatever.

So I set myself the “forum double” of 10,000 points on stackoverflow and 1,000 points on the Microsoft .NET Framework Forums. It’s a LOT harder to get points on the Microsoft forum – trust me.

This is completely arbitrary but what the hell.

The stackoverflow goal was achieved a while back (refer previous posts) but I’ve just achieved the Microsoft one.



Enjoy!

ADFS : objectGUID as a claim

You may have a business requirement to pass some unique key to the application that is not readily identifiable or editable. There are two possibilities in AD viz. objectSID and objectGUID.

As per SID vs. GUID, objectGUID is the better choice because:

“globally unique identifier (GUID), which is a 128-bit value is unique not only in the enterprise but also across the world”   and
“the values of other object properties can change, but the object-GUID never changes. When an object is assigned a GUID, it keeps that value for life”. 

So you configure the claim in the normal LDAP attribute manner and when you look at the claims, you see:

http://schemas.company.com/identity/claims/objectguid kzGVAByOYki4z7CdR2yecA==
WTF – that ain’t no GUID? The two equal signs at the end would seem to indicate Base64?

Mr. Google to the rescue and viola Issuing objectGUID as an ADFS Claim.

So lets test it out. Couldn’t be bothered to create a VS project just for this so the inestimable LINQPad to the rescue.



And the GUID at the bottom is indeed what is displayed in AD.

Enjoy!

ADFS : Forum about to be retired

 

Refer : This Forum Is to Be Retired.

After a number of posts from people much more knowledgeable and much more influential than me happy to see that the decision was reversed.

Nice one Microsoft!

But I do content myself with the fact that I had a small part to play in all of this!

Enjoy!

WCF : Missing WCF .svc file in project

 

I created a WCF project in VS 2010 in the normal manner but when I wanted to connect to it, I found that the .svc file was missing?

WTF?

So I published the project to a folder. Lo and behold, the .svc file appeared in all its glory!

I then added this folder as an application to IIS 7.5 and all was sweetness and light.

Enjoy!

SAML : Encoding / decoding a trace

 

I blogged previously about ways to look at the SAML trace and decode the gobbledegook (actually it’s Base 64!).

One of the ways I mentioned was to use the text wizard inside Fiddler.

The problem is that to use it, you have to start Fiddler which installs proxies, generates certificate errors etc. The cure is almost worse than the symptoms!

So I sent Eric Lawrence (the author of Fiddler) an email to ask if they could make the text wizard functionality a standalone option.

You may think that’s a bit of a cheek but in my experience, people welcome feedback etc. as long as it’s valid and not the “Please do my homework for me” or “Help it doesn’t work” kind of stuff.

He was kind enough to reply and he suggested:

Inside Fiddler’s Rules > Customize Rules > OnBoot, insert:

 static function OnBoot() {
        if (Environment.CommandLine.Contains("-TextWizard")) 
        {
            FiddlerApplication.UI.actShowTextWizard(null);
 }       

Then create a shortcut that launches Fiddler like so:

C:\>"C:\Program Files\Fiddler2\Fiddler.exe" -viewer –TextWizard

Works like a dream.

Enjoy!

stackoverflow : Finally – 5 figures!

 

Will there it is. I finally cracked the magic 10,000 rep. mark!

And at the same time …

… I made it into the top 3%.

Enjoy!

Misc : On asking questions

 

Jon Skeet wrote a very good article : Writing the perfect question.

I’m active on stackoverflow and the MSDN forums and I wish more people would read this article.

Recently there was a question and I replied waxing voluble about how to do something using WIF and the dude replied:

“Actually it’s a Java application”.

FFS dude, why didn’t you put that minor piece of information in the question?

The quality of the answer is directly related to the quality of the question.

And for God’s sake, spell check it!

Enjoy!

Visual Studio : Cannot import the following key file

 

When you have a signed project in TFS, every time a new person gets it out, they have this problem. So they create a new certificate, check it all in and the next person has the same problem. WTF.

The error is:

“Cannot import the following key file: xxx.pfx. The key file may be password protected. To correct this, try to import the certificate again or manually install the certificate to the Strong Name CSP with the following key container name: VS_KEY_blah”

Mr Google to the rescue. Found a number of “solutions” but then stumbled across one that worked.

In the project properties under “Signing”, click the dropdown arrow and click on the pfx file name. This invokes the password dialogue so you can type in the new password and Bingo!

All then compiles.

Enjoy!

Stackoverflow : What can I say?

Taken a while but I finally got there!

 



Enjoy!

ADFS : Exclusive Canonicalization transform error

 

Busy trying to get ADFS v2.0 to work with a third-party SAML implementation and got this weird error:

System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: ID6005: Exclusive Canonicalization transform does not support the algorithm 'http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xml-c14n-20010315'.

“IDxxxx” as an error normally implies it comes from WIF so trawl through that and it turns out that the only transform it accepts is:

http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#

The transforms .NET works with are all listed in:

System.Security.Cryptography.Xml.SignedXml

So I had to get the third party code changed to conform with ADFS.

What is the point of all this, you may ask.

This is all connected with signatures e.g. your sp.xml looks like:

SPSSODescriptor AuthnRequestsSigned="true" WantAssertionsSigned="true" protocolSupportEnumeration="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:protocol"

Because XML can have many forms e.g. whitespace or none, CR or CR/LF etc. you need to convert the XML to an agreed format before you sign it. Otherwise the other side may be checking the signature on a “different” document. These “agreed formats” are the canonical transforms. They are all W3C standards.

So e.g. it may state:

The canonical form of an XML document is the physical representation of the document produced by the method described in this specification. The changes are summarized in the following list:

• The document is encoded in UTF-8
• Line breaks normalized to #xA on input, before parsing
• Attribute values are normalized, as if by a validating processor
• Character and parsed entity references are replaced
• CDATA sections are replaced with their character content
• The XML declaration and document type declaration (DTD) are removed
• Empty elements are converted to start-end tag pairs

etc.

Enjoy!

C# : & in the XML

 

If you have an XML string (e.g. the appSettings in web.config) that contains an “&” it won’t compile e.g.

<add key="URL" value="http://example.com?ID1=abc&ID2=123"/>

The solution is to escape it with the Unicode number i.e.

<add key="URL" value="http://example.com?ID1=abc&#038;ID2=123"/>

Enjoy!