Thursday, April 22, 2004

Gone Ride Be Back Later

Well, tomorrow I am heading out with my Folks to go Camping and Dirt Riding. It should be a lot of funny and I am really looking forward to it.

Now I know that this week has been a little light on the post. What can I say, work has kept me pretty busy. I have written some very cool things though. We now have a web application that is using active directory. Not just for authentication, but also assigning roles by what groups the user is in. I wrote a fairly good xml based ASP.NET forms engine. It uses XSL and transforms a xml config file in to Web forms, that includes validation. I am going to be working on adding functionality to that and making it as good as I can. In fact once I get a couple more things polished we are going to start using it at work.

Now I know I still owe, the htmlGenerator, that takes xml and your xsl files and write you an html file. I will get it up here, I promise. I just need to takes some time to write a little documentation on it, before I set it free. But I have to tell you, I've been using the heck out if it. Infact on the ASP.NET form engine.

So next week, some more indept post on the path to Authenication with Active Directory (i.e. how to get the microsoft example code to actually work), ASP.NET webform from an XML template. (I love code that generates code...It makes me happy) and even a little talk about the Riding Trip.

 

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Active Directory and Web Form Validation in ASP.NET (How I am learning to love Active Directory)

So it's been a little while since my last post. I have been working on a project that of course is due by the end of the month or even sooner if I can. The best part about this project is we are using active directory for our authentication engine. (If it's good enough for the network login it's good enough for me.) The data that this project is dealing with is very hush hush, only upper echelon people get to read kind of stuff (This would not be me!). So it has to be very secure and very reliable, and I have had a month to get it done. (humm, not sure how that worked out)

The tough part about this project has been the Security. It has to be tight, and with good reason. So we decide to use AD (Active Directory). Now how about find good information on authentication with AD? Not so easy really. There is not a great deal of stuff out there, and I have had to reread a lot of it to get the idea. But it is now starting to click. There is two parts to it. The LDAP authenication, and the FormsAuthentication. The first is to authenticate the user against AD, and the second is to make sure they don't have to login on every page. I don't have all of this mastered as of yet, but I am hoping to by wednesday.

Here are some of the links I have collected in this authentication journey.
Use Form Authentication with Active Directory
Forms Authentication with Active Directory
Active Directory Authentication with ASP.NET
ASP.NET Forms Authentication

Sunday, April 18, 2004

Movie Quote

Movie Quote for the Day
Movie : "Mystery Men"
Character: "The Shoveller"
Quote: "We have a blind date with destiny and it looks like she ordered the lobster."