Geeky Bob

Programmatically Flushing FTP Logs

03 February 2012 • by Bob • IIS, Scripting, FTP, Extensibility

I had a great question from Scott Forsyth earlier today about programmatically flushing the logs for an FTP site. Scott had noticed that there was a FlushLog method listed on the following page in the IIS Configuration Reference:

http://www.iis.net/ConfigReference/system.applicationHost/sites/site/ftpServer

Unfortunately there wasn't a code sample for that method; but as luck would have it, I had already written some code to do just that. (I love synchronicity...) With that in mind, I though that I'd post the code in a blog. In keeping with the cross-language samples that I wrote for the topics in the Configuration Reference, I thought that's I'd include several languages in this blog to make it easier for someone else to copy and paste.

C#

using System;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.Web.Administration;

internal static class Sample
{
   private static void Main()
   {
      using (ServerManager serverManager = new ServerManager())
      {
         Configuration config = serverManager.GetApplicationHostConfiguration();
         // Retrieve the sites collection.
         ConfigurationSection sitesSection = config.GetSection("system.applicationHost/sites");
         ConfigurationElementCollection sitesCollection = sitesSection.GetCollection();

         // Locate a specific site.
         ConfigurationElement siteElement = FindElement(sitesCollection,"site","name",@"ftp.contoso.com");
         if (siteElement == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Element not found!");

         // Create an object for the ftpServer element.
         ConfigurationElement ftpServerElement = siteElement.GetChildElement("ftpServer");
         // Create an instance of the FlushLog method.
         ConfigurationMethodInstance FlushLog = ftpServerElement.Methods["FlushLog"].CreateInstance();
         // Execute the method to flush the logs for the FTP site.
         FlushLog.Execute();
      }
   }

   // Locate and return the index for a specific element in a collection.
   private static ConfigurationElement FindElement(ConfigurationElementCollection collection, string elementTagName, params string[] keyValues)
   {
      foreach (ConfigurationElement element in collection)
      {
         if (String.Equals(element.ElementTagName, elementTagName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
         {
            bool matches = true;
            for (int i = 0; i < keyValues.Length; i += 2)
            {
               object o = element.GetAttributeValue(keyValues[i]);
               string value = null;
               if (o != null)
               {
                  value = o.ToString();
               }
               if (!String.Equals(value, keyValues[i + 1], StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
               {         matches = false;
                  break;
               }
            }
            if (matches)
            {
               return element;
            }
         }
      }
      return null;
   }
}

VB.NET

Imports System
Imports System.Text
Imports Microsoft.Web.Administration

Module Sample
   Sub Main()
      Dim serverManager As ServerManager = New ServerManager
      Dim config As Configuration = serverManager.GetApplicationHostConfiguration
      ' Retrieve the sites collection.
      Dim sitesSection As ConfigurationSection = config.GetSection("system.applicationHost/sites")
      Dim sitesCollection As ConfigurationElementCollection = sitesSection.GetCollection

      ' Locate a specific site.
      Dim siteElement As ConfigurationElement = FindElement(sitesCollection,"site","name","ftp.contoso.com")
      If (siteElement Is Nothing) Then
         Throw New InvalidOperationException("Element not found!")
      End If

      ' Create an object for the ftpServer element.
      Dim ftpServerElement As ConfigurationElement = siteElement.GetChildElement("ftpServer")
      ' Create an instance of the FlushLog method.
      Dim FlushLog As ConfigurationMethodInstance = ftpServerElement.Methods("FlushLog").CreateInstance()
      ' Execute the method to flush the logs for the FTP site.
      FlushLog.Execute()

   End Sub

   ' Locate and return the index for a specific element in a collection.
   Private Function FindElement(ByVal collection As ConfigurationElementCollection, ByVal elementTagName As String, ByVal ParamArray keyValues() As String) As ConfigurationElement
      For Each element As ConfigurationElement In collection
         If String.Equals(element.ElementTagName, elementTagName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) Then
            Dim matches As Boolean = True
            Dim i As Integer
            For i = 0 To keyValues.Length - 1 Step 2
               Dim o As Object = element.GetAttributeValue(keyValues(i))
               Dim value As String = Nothing
               If (Not (o) Is Nothing) Then
                  value = o.ToString
               End If
               If Not String.Equals(value, keyValues((i + 1)), StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) Then
                  matches = False
                  Exit For
               End If
            Next
            If matches Then
               Return element
            End If
         End If
      Next
      Return Nothing
   End Function

End Module

JavaScript

// Create a Writable Admin Manager object.
var adminManager = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.ApplicationHost.WritableAdminManager');
adminManager.CommitPath = "MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST";

// Retrieve the sites collection.
var sitesSection = adminManager.GetAdminSection("system.applicationHost/sites","MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST");
var sitesCollection = sitesSection.Collection;

// Locate a specific site.
var siteElementPos = FindElement(sitesCollection,"site",["name","ftp.contoso.com"]);
if (siteElementPos == -1) throw "Element not found!";

// Retrieve the site element.
var siteElement = sitesCollection.Item(siteElementPos);
// Create an object for the ftpServer element.
var ftpServerElement = siteElement.ChildElements.Item("ftpServer");
// Create an instance of the FlushLog method.
var FlushLog = ftpServerElement.Methods.Item("FlushLog").CreateInstance();
// Execute the method to flush the logs for the FTP site.
FlushLog.Execute();

// Locate and return the index for a specific element in a collection.
function FindElement(collection, elementTagName, valuesToMatch) {
   for (var i = 0; i < collection.Count; i++) {
      var element = collection.Item(i);
      if (element.Name == elementTagName) {
         var matches = true;
         for (var iVal = 0; iVal < valuesToMatch.length; iVal += 2) {
            var property = element.GetPropertyByName(valuesToMatch[iVal]);
            var value = property.Value;
            if (value != null) {
               value = value.toString();
            }
            if (value != valuesToMatch[iVal + 1]) {
               matches = false;
               break;
            }
         }
         if (matches) {
            return i;
         }
      }
   }
   return -1;
}

VBScript

' Create a Writable Admin Manager object.
Set adminManager = CreateObject("Microsoft.ApplicationHost.WritableAdminManager")
adminManager.CommitPath = "MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST"

' Retrieve the sites collection.
Set sitesSection = adminManager.GetAdminSection("system.applicationHost/sites","MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST")
Set sitesCollection = sitesSection.Collection

' Locate a specific site.
siteElementPos = FindElement(sitesCollection,"site",Array("name","ftp.contoso.com"))
If siteElementPos = -1 Then
   WScript.Echo "Element not found!"
   WScript.Quit
End If

' Retrieve the site element.
Set siteElement = sitesCollection.Item(siteElementPos)
' Create an object for the ftpServer element.
Set ftpServerElement = siteElement.ChildElements.Item("ftpServer")
' Create an instance of the FlushLog method.
Set FlushLog = ftpServerElement.Methods.Item("FlushLog").CreateInstance()
' Execute the method to flush the logs for the FTP site.
FlushLog.Execute()

' Locate and return the index for a specific element in a collection.
Function FindElement(collection, elementTagName, valuesToMatch)
   For i = 0 To CInt(collection.Count) - 1
      Set element = collection.Item(i)
      If element.Name = elementTagName Then
         matches = True
         For iVal = 0 To UBound(valuesToMatch) Step 2
            Set property = element.GetPropertyByName(valuesToMatch(iVal))
            value = property.Value
            If Not IsNull(value) Then
               value = CStr(value)
            End If
            If Not value = CStr(valuesToMatch(iVal + 1)) Then
               matches = False
               Exit For
            End If
         Next
         If matches Then
            Exit For
         End If
      End If
   Next
   If matches Then
      FindElement = i
   Else
      FindElement = -1   End If
End Function

Summary

Hopefully this gives you an idea of how to call the FlushLog method. You can also use these examples to call the Start and Stop methods for FTP sites; you just need to substitute the correct method in place of the FlushLog method.

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

Using URL Rewrite to Insert Different Scripts Based on Browser Type

03 February 2012 • by Bob • IIS, Scripting

I just stumbled across a piece of sample code that I had written several months ago for a coworker, and I thought that I'd share it with everyone.

Here's the scenario: my coworker asked me if it was possible to have different client-side scripts inserted dynamically depending on the type of web browser that is being used. If the application was written in ASP.NET or some other dynamic language, then it would be trivial to determine the browser type and return the correct HTML <script> block to the client. Unfortunately, he needed the script for both static and dynamic pages, and he didn't want to modify all of his pages unless absolutely necessary.

This sounded to me like a job for a pair of outbound rules in URL Rewrite.

With the above design requirements in mind, I wrote the following sample configuration for URL Rewrite that accomplishes the following tasks:

If you’re using Internet Explorer, it inserts VBScript to display a popup message.
If you’re not using Internet Explorer, it inserts JavaScript to display a different popup message.

In order to use this sample code, you need to open the web.config file for your application and add the following code for the URL Rewrite rules. (Note: You need to disable compression in order to avoid an HTTP 500.52 error, and the following sample code does just that.)

<system.webServer>
<rewrite>
    <outboundRules>
      <rule name="Add JavaScript" preCondition="IsNotInternetExplorer" patternSyntax="ExactMatch">
        <match filterByTags="None" pattern="</body>" />
        <action type="Rewrite" value="<script language="javascript">alert('You are not using Internet Explorer!');</script></body>" />
      </rule>
      <rule name="Add VBScript" preCondition="IsInternetExplorer" patternSyntax="ExactMatch">
        <match filterByTags="None" pattern="</body>" />
        <action type="Rewrite" value="<script language="vbscript">MsgBox "You are using Internet Explorer!"</script></body>" />
      </rule>
      <preConditions>
        <preCondition name="IsInternetExplorer">
          <add input="{RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE}" pattern="^text/html" />
          <add input="{HTTP_USER_AGENT}" pattern=".*MSIE" negate="false" />
        </preCondition>
        <preCondition name="IsNotInternetExplorer">
          <add input="{RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE}" pattern="^text/html" />
          <add input="{HTTP_USER_AGENT}" pattern=".*MSIE" negate="true" />
        </preCondition>
      </preConditions>
    </outboundRules>
</rewrite>
<urlCompression doStaticCompression="false" doDynamicCompression="false" />
</system.webServer>

The above example is what I sent to my coworker, and I intended it as an easy place to start when you just want a simple chunk of script to be inserted. It works well, but a better example would be to have it dynamically insert code for an external script file based on the browser type. This is illustrated in the following example:

<system.webServer>
<rewrite>
    <outboundRules>
      <rule name="For Other Browsers" preCondition="IsNotInternetExplorer" patternSyntax="ExactMatch">
        <match filterByTags="None" pattern="</body>" />
        <action type="Rewrite" value="<script language="javascript" src="other.js"></script></body>" />
      </rule>
      <rule name="For Internet Explorer" preCondition="IsInternetExplorer" patternSyntax="ExactMatch">
        <match filterByTags="None" pattern="</body>" />
        <action type="Rewrite" value="<script language="javascript" src="msie.js"></script></body>" />
      </rule>
      <preConditions>
        <preCondition name="IsInternetExplorer">
          <add input="{RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE}" pattern="^text/html" />
          <add input="{HTTP_USER_AGENT}" pattern=".*MSIE" negate="false" />
        </preCondition>
        <preCondition name="IsNotInternetExplorer">
          <add input="{RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE}" pattern="^text/html" />
          <add input="{HTTP_USER_AGENT}" pattern=".*MSIE" negate="true" />
        </preCondition>
      </preConditions>
    </outboundRules>
</rewrite>
<urlCompression doStaticCompression="false" doDynamicCompression="false" />
</system.webServer>

The above sample dynamically inserts an HTML <script> block, and specifies one script file ("msie.js") for Internet Explorer a different script file ("other.js") for all other browsers.

A simple script for a simple task - just the way I like it. ;-]

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

Advanced Log Parser Charts Part 2 - Using Gradient Colors for Area Charts

29 January 2012 • by Bob • IIS, LogParser, Scripting

In Part 2 of this series, I'll show you how to customize the area chart from Part 1 to show the chart area with a gradient. More specifically, there are three different chart gradient methods that we'll take a look at in this blog post:

Before I continue, there is one quick Log Parser convention that you should realize: there are two objects that Log Parser will create and pass to your script. As you look at the sample scripts in this post, you will see these objects in use:

Object Name	Description	Example
`chartSpace`	This is the base chart workspace object.	// Set the border style for the chart. chartSpace.Border.Color = "#000000"; chartSpace.Border.Weight = 2;
`chart`	This is equivalent to the `chartSpace.Charts(0)` object.	// Change the background color. chart.PlotArea.Interior.Color = "#ffffff";

Before I get started, here's a quick review of VBScript that uses Log Parser COM objects:

Option Explicit

' Declare the variables.
Dim objLogQuery, strSQL
Dim objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

' Create the Log Parser objects.
Set objLogQuery = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery")
Set objInputW3CFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.W3CInputFormat")
Set objOutputChartFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.ChartOutputFormat")

' Define the SQL query.
strSQL = "SELECT Date, COUNT(*) AS Hits " & _
    " INTO _Part2.gif " & _
    " FROM *.log " & _
    " GROUP BY Date " & _
    " ORDER BY Date"

' Specify the chart options.
objOutputChartFormat.groupSize = "800x600"
objOutputChartFormat.fileType = "GIF"
objOutputChartFormat.chartType = "Area"
objOutputChartFormat.categories = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.values = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.legend = "OFF"

' Execute the SQL statement to create the chart.
objLogQuery.ExecuteBatch strSQL, objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, you don't have to use the COM objects, but I chose to do so for this blog series because it makes it a little easier to script. That being said, if I use one month's worth of log files from one of my low-volume websites, Log Parser and this VBScript creates the following rather ugly daily hits chart:

With all of this in mind, let's take a look at some simple configuration scripts.

Setting Fonts and Titles and Such...

The above chart really needs some help, so the first thing that we'll do is change a few things. First things first, we need to specify the name of the chart configuration script in the VBScript sample:

Option Explicit

' Declare the variables.
Dim objLogQuery, strSQL
Dim objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

' Create the Log Parser objects.
Set objLogQuery = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery")
Set objInputW3CFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.W3CInputFormat")
Set objOutputChartFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.ChartOutputFormat")

' Define the SQL query.
strSQL = "SELECT Date, COUNT(*) AS Hits " & _
    " INTO Part2.gif " & _
    " FROM *.log " & _
    " GROUP BY Date " & _
    " ORDER BY Date"

' Specify the chart options.
objOutputChartFormat.groupSize = "800x600"
objOutputChartFormat.fileType = "GIF"
objOutputChartFormat.chartType = "Area"
objOutputChartFormat.categories = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.values = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.legend = "OFF"
objOutputChartFormat.config = "Part2.js"

' Execute the SQL statement to create the chart.
objLogQuery.ExecuteBatch strSQL, objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

Next, we need to create the actual chart configuration script, which I wrote in JavaScript; you will need to save this as "Part2.js" in order to use my samples:

// Set the title above the chart.
chart.HasTitle = true;
chart.Title.Caption = "Hits by Day"

// Set the border style for the chart.
chartSpace.Border.Color = "#000000";
chartSpace.Border.Weight = 2;

// Change the background color for the plot area.
chart.PlotArea.Interior.Color = "#f0f0f0";

// Set the font size for the chart values.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).DataLabelsCollection(0).Font.Size = 6;

// Get the start and end dates from the X axis.
var startDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(0).Caption;
var endDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.ItemCount-1).Caption;

// Set the caption below the chart.
chartSpace.HasChartSpaceTitle = true;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Caption =
    "This chart shows the hits by day from "
    + startDate + " to " + endDate + ".";
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Font.Size = 10;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Position = chartSpace.Constants.chTitlePositionBottom;

// Set the style and caption for the Y axis.
chart.Axes(0).Font.Size = 8;
chart.Axes(0).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(0).Title.Caption = "Dates";
chart.Axes(0).Title.Font.Size = 9;

// Set the style and caption for the X axis.
chart.Axes(1).Font.Size = 7;
chart.Axes(1).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(1).Title.Caption = "Hits";
chart.Axes(1).Title.Font.Size = 9;

This chart configuration script does several things:

Sets the title above the chart to "Hits by Day"
Sets a black border style for the chart
Sets the background color for the plot area to a light gray
Sets the font size for the chart values to 6-point
Sets the caption below the chart for the start and end date
Sets the font styles and captions for the Y and Y axes

When you run the VBScript, the resulting chart looks like the following:

This looks a little more legible, but now let's look at setting some colors.

Setting a One-Color Gradient

Using the same JavaScript sample from earlier, we just need to make a couple of changes to the chart configuration script in order to use the SetOneColorGradient method:

// Set the title above the chart.
chart.HasTitle = true;
chart.Title.Caption = "Hits by Day"

// Set the border style for the chart.
chartSpace.Border.Color = "#000000";
chartSpace.Border.Weight = 2;

// Change the background color for the plot area.
chart.PlotArea.Interior.Color = "#f0f0f0";

// Specify the chart gradient styles.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).Interior.SetOneColorGradient(
 chartSpace.Constants.chGradientHorizontal,
 chartSpace.Constants.chGradientVariantEnd,
 1.0,
 "#ff0000");

// Set the font size for the chart values.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).DataLabelsCollection(0).Font.Size = 6;

// Get the start and end dates from the X axis.
var startDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(0).Caption;
var endDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.ItemCount-1).Caption;

// Set the caption below the chart.
chartSpace.HasChartSpaceTitle = true;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Caption =
    "This chart shows the hits by day from "
    + startDate + " to " + endDate + ".";
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Font.Size = 10;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Position = chartSpace.Constants.chTitlePositionBottom;

// Set the style and caption for the Y axis.
chart.Axes(0).Font.Size = 8;
chart.Axes(0).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(0).Title.Caption = "Dates";
chart.Axes(0).Title.Font.Size = 9;

// Set the style and caption for the X axis.
chart.Axes(1).Font.Size = 7;
chart.Axes(1).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(1).Title.Caption = "Hits";
chart.Axes(1).Title.Font.Size = 9;

When you run the VBScript, this renders a chart that looks like the following:

There are four parameters for the SetOneColorGradient method to look at:

Parameter	Description
`GradientStyle`	This is a value from the `ChartGradientStyleEnum` enumeration, which specifies how the gradient will be displayed. For example: horizontally, vertically, diagonally, etc.
`GradientVariant`	This is a value from the `ChartGradientVariantEnum` enumeration, which specifies which direction the gradient will be displayed. For example: lighter to darker, from the inside to the outside, etc.
`GradientDegree`	This is a double value from 0.0 to 1.0, which specifies whether the gradient will range from the color to lighter or darker shades.
`Color`	This is a string that specifies the color. This can be a commonly-named color, such as "red," "blue," etc., or this can be an RGB hexadecimal value, such as "#ff0000" (red), "#0000ff" (blue), etc. (See my 216-Color Safe Web Palette blog post for a large series of hexadecimal color values.)

Let's make some quick changes to parameters that we are passing to the SetOneColorGradient method and alter a few of the colors:

// Set the title above the chart.
chart.HasTitle = true;
chart.Title.Caption = "Hits by Day"

// Set the border style for the chart.
chartSpace.Border.Color = "#000000";
chartSpace.Border.Weight = 2;

// Change the background color for the plot area.
chart.PlotArea.Interior.Color = "#333333";

// Specify the chart gradient styles.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).Interior.SetOneColorGradient(
    chartSpace.Constants.chGradientHorizontal,
    chartSpace.Constants.chGradientVariantStart,
    0.0,
    "#00ff00");

// Set the font size for the chart values.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).DataLabelsCollection(0).Font.Size = 6;
chart.SeriesCollection(0).DataLabelsCollection(0).Font.Color = "#ffffff";

// Get the start and end dates from the X axis.
var startDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(0).Caption;
var endDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.ItemCount-1).Caption;

// Set the caption below the chart.
chartSpace.HasChartSpaceTitle = true;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Caption =
    "This chart shows the hits by day from "
    + startDate + " to " + endDate + ".";
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Font.Size = 10;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Position = chartSpace.Constants.chTitlePositionBottom;

// Set the style and caption for the Y axis.
chart.Axes(0).Font.Size = 8;
chart.Axes(0).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(0).Title.Caption = "Dates";
chart.Axes(0).Title.Font.Size = 9;

// Set the style and caption for the X axis.
chart.Axes(1).Font.Size = 7;
chart.Axes(1).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(1).Title.Caption = "Hits";
chart.Axes(1).Title.Font.Size = 9;

When you run the VBScript, that results in the following considerably cooler-looking chart:

Setting a Two-Color Gradient

The SetTwoColorGradient method offers more color flexibility than the one-color gradient method, and we only need to make a couple of changes to the JavaScript for the chart configuration script in order to use the new method:

// Set the title above the chart.
chart.HasTitle = true;
chart.Title.Caption = "Hits by Day"

// Set the border style for the chart.
chartSpace.Border.Color = "#000000";
chartSpace.Border.Weight = 2;

// Change the background color for the plot area.
chart.PlotArea.Interior.Color = "#FFFF99";

// Specify the chart gradient styles.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).Interior.SetTwoColorGradient(
 chartSpace.Constants.chGradientVertical,
 chartSpace.Constants.chGradientVariantStart,
 "#0066FF",
 "#00FFCC");

// Set the font size for the chart values.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).DataLabelsCollection(0).Font.Size = 6;

// Get the start and end dates from the X axis.
var startDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(0).Caption;
var endDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.ItemCount-1).Caption;

// Set the caption below the chart.
chartSpace.HasChartSpaceTitle = true;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Caption =
    "This chart shows the hits by day from "
    + startDate + " to " + endDate + ".";
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Font.Size = 10;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Position = chartSpace.Constants.chTitlePositionBottom;

// Set the style and caption for the Y axis.
chart.Axes(0).Font.Size = 8;
chart.Axes(0).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(0).Title.Caption = "Dates";
chart.Axes(0).Title.Font.Size = 9;

// Set the style and caption for the X axis.
chart.Axes(1).Font.Size = 7;
chart.Axes(1).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(1).Title.Caption = "Hits";
chart.Axes(1).Title.Font.Size = 9;

When you run the VBScript, this will create the following chart:

There are four parameters for the SetTwoColorGradient method to consider:

Parameter	Description
`GradientStyle`	This is a value from the `ChartGradientStyleEnum` enumeration, which specifies how the gradient will be displayed. For example: horizontally, vertically, diagonally, etc.
`GradientVariant`	This is a value from the `ChartGradientVariantEnum` enumeration, which specifies which direction the gradient will be displayed. For example: lighter to darker, from the inside to the outside, etc.
`Color`	This is a string that specifies the first color for the gradient; this can be a commonly-named color, such as "red," "blue," etc., or this can be an RGB hexadecimal value, such as "#ff0000" (red), "#0000ff" (blue), etc. (See my 216-Color Safe Web Palette blog post for a large series of hexadecimal color values.)
`BackColor`	This is a string that specifies the second color for the gradient; this can be a value like the `Color` parameter.

Using a Preset Gradient

There is an additional gradient method that uses a collection of preset color palettes; this method is appropriately named SetPresetGradient. Once again, we need to make a couple of changes to the JavaScript for the chart configuration script in order to use the new method:

// Set the title above the chart.
chart.HasTitle = true;
chart.Title.Caption = "Hits by Day"

// Set the border style for the chart.
chartSpace.Border.Color = "#000000";
chartSpace.Border.Weight = 2;

// Change the background color for the plot area.
chart.PlotArea.Interior.Color = "#EEFFDD";

// Specify the chart gradient styles.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).Interior.SetPresetGradient(
 chartSpace.Constants.chGradientHorizontal,
 chartSpace.Constants.chGradientVariantStart,
 chartSpace.Constants.chGradientFire);

// Set the font size for the chart values.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).DataLabelsCollection(0).Font.Size = 6;

// Get the start and end dates from the X axis.
var startDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(0).Caption;
var endDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.ItemCount-1).Caption;

// Set the caption below the chart.
chartSpace.HasChartSpaceTitle = true;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Caption =
    "This chart shows the hits by day from "
    + startDate + " to " + endDate + ".";
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Font.Size = 10;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Position = chartSpace.Constants.chTitlePositionBottom;

// Set the style and caption for the Y axis.
chart.Axes(0).Font.Size = 8;
chart.Axes(0).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(0).Title.Caption = "Dates";
chart.Axes(0).Title.Font.Size = 9;

// Set the style and caption for the X axis.
chart.Axes(1).Font.Size = 7;
chart.Axes(1).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(1).Title.Caption = "Hits";
chart.Axes(1).Title.Font.Size = 9;

When you run the VBScript, this will create the following chart:

There are three parameters for the SetPresetGradient method to look at:

Parameter	Description
`GradientStyle`	This is a value from the `ChartGradientStyleEnum` enumeration, which specifies how the gradient will be displayed. For example: horizontally, vertically, diagonally, etc.
`GradientVariant`	This is a value from the `ChartGradientVariantEnum` enumeration, which specifies which direction the gradient will be displayed. For example: lighter to darker, from the inside to the outside, etc.
`GradientPreset`	This is a value from the `ChartPresetGradientTypeEnum` enumeration, which specifies the gradient preset palette.

There are several of preset gradients in the ChartPresetGradientTypeEnum enumeration, and a little experimentation will yield the best results.

Using 3-D Area Charts

For one last sample, I'd like to show you what gradients can do for your 3-D area charts. To do so, we first need to make a couple of small changes the VBScript that will create the chart:

Option Explicit

' Declare the variables.
Dim objLogQuery, strSQL
Dim objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

' Create the Log Parser objects.
Set objLogQuery = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery")
Set objInputW3CFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.W3CInputFormat")
Set objOutputChartFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.ChartOutputFormat")

' Define the SQL query.
strSQL = "SELECT Date, COUNT(*) AS Hits " & _
    " INTO _Part2.gif " & _
    " FROM *.log " & _
    " GROUP BY Date " & _
    " ORDER BY Date"

' Specify the chart options.
objOutputChartFormat.groupSize = "1024x768"
objOutputChartFormat.fileType = "GIF"
objOutputChartFormat.chartType = "Area3D"
objOutputChartFormat.categories = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.values = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.legend = "OFF"
objOutputChartFormat.config = "Part2.js"

' Execute the SQL statement to create the chart.
objLogQuery.ExecuteBatch strSQL, objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

Next, we need to update the JavaScript for the chart configuration script to work with the new VBScript; for the most part, I'm just updating font sizes and chart colors:

// Set the title above the chart.
chart.HasTitle = true;
chart.Title.Caption = "Hits by Day"

// Clear the caption for the chart series.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).Caption = "";

// Set the border style for the chart.
chartSpace.Border.Color = "#000000";
chartSpace.Border.Weight = 2;

// Change the background color for the plot area.
chart.PlotArea.Interior.Color = "#FFFFCC";

// Specify the chart gradient styles.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).Interior.SetTwoColorGradient(
    chartSpace.Constants.chGradientHorizontal,
    chartSpace.Constants.chGradientVariantEnd,
    "#00CCFF",
    "#FFFFFF");

// Set the font size for the chart values.
chart.SeriesCollection(0).DataLabelsCollection(0).Font.Size = 7;

// Get the start and end dates from the X axis.
var startDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(0).Caption;
var endDate = chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.Item(chart.Axes(0).CategoryLabels.ItemCount-1).Caption;

// Set the caption below the chart.
chartSpace.HasChartSpaceTitle = true;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Caption =
    "This chart shows the hits by day from "
    + startDate + " to " + endDate + ".";
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Font.Size = 10;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Position = chartSpace.Constants.chTitlePositionBottom;

// Set the style and caption for the Y axis.
chart.Axes(0).Font.Size = 10;
chart.Axes(0).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(0).Title.Caption = "Dates";
chart.Axes(0).Title.Font.Size = 11;

// Set the style and caption for the X axis.
chart.Axes(1).Font.Size = 9;
chart.Axes(1).HasTitle = true;
chart.Axes(1).Title.Caption = "Hits";
chart.Axes(1).Title.Font.Size = 11;

When you run the VBScript, this will create the following chart:

Summary

In this blog post, I've written a lot of code samples in order to show you four different ways to set gradients for your Log Parser area charts. In future posts, I'll show you how to do some more cool things with some other types of charts.

;-]

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

Advanced Log Parser Charts Part 1 - Working With Configuration Scripts

28 January 2012 • by Bob • IIS, LogParser, Scripting

I recently had a situation where I wanted to customize the chart output from Log Parser, and after a bunch of research I eventually arrived at the conclusion that configuration scripts to create customized charts are probably the least-documented feature of Log Parser. After a lot of experimentation, (and a bit of frustration), I finally managed to achieve the results that I wanted. With that in mind, I thought that it would make a great blog series if I documented some of the settings that I used.

Log Parser and Chart Configuration Scripts

When you look in the Log Parser help file, it makes mention of using configuration scripts to customize charts, and it provides the following small JavaScript sample:

// Add a caption
chartSpace.HasChartSpaceTitle = true;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Caption = "Generated by Log Parser 2.2";
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Font.Size = 6;
chartSpace.ChartSpaceTitle.Position = chartSpace.Constants.chTitlePositionBottom;

// Change the background color
chart.PlotArea.Interior.Color = chartSpace.Constants.chColorNone;

Unfortunately, this sample isn't very useful, although I found dozens of forum posts that quote this sample as a way to do things - but it's the only sample that most people cite. The Log Parser help file mentions looking at the MSDN ChartSpace Object Model documentation, but that documentation is only slightly more useful. These two references are what led me to my earlier conclusion that chart configuration scripts are not well-documented, and especially when you are trying to do something with Log Parser.

What I found to be particularly helpful was to use the Log Parser COM interface and write scripts by using Adersoft's VbsEdit and JsEdit. In case you haven't used either of those applications, they are great IDEs for writing scripts; they both give you a great debugging environment, and they have a great object browser that I used to discover what options were available to me. In the end, these two editors made it possible to create the chart configuration scripts that I will discuss in this blog series.

By the way, chart configuration scripts can be written in VBScript or JavaScript, but for this blog I will use VBScript for the Log Parser COM samples and JavaScript for the configuration script samples. I didn't have to do it that way, but it seemed like a good idea to help differentiate between the samples.

Using COM versus the Command-Line

For the samples in this blog series, I will use Log Parser's COM interface and VBScript to create my charts, but this is not necessary; everything that I am documenting can be done from the command-line version of Log parser, and I'll give you some quick examples to see the differences.

The following examples generate some simple area charts that plot the total number of hits by day, and both examples do exactly the same thing:

Command-Line:

logparser.exe "SELECT Date, COUNT(*) AS Hits INTO HitsByDay.gif FROM *.log GROUP BY Date ORDER BY Date" -i:W3C -fileType:GIF -groupSize:800x600 -chartType:Area -categories:ON -values:ON -legend:OFF

COM Interface:

Option Explicit

Dim objLogQuery, strSQL
Dim objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

Set objLogQuery = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery")
Set objInputW3CFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.W3CInputFormat")
Set objOutputChartFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.ChartOutputFormat")

strSQL = "SELECT Date, COUNT(*) AS Hits " & _
    " INTO HitsByDay.gif " & _
    " FROM *.log " & _
    " GROUP BY Date " & _
    " ORDER BY Date"

objOutputChartFormat.groupSize = "800x600"
objOutputChartFormat.fileType = "GIF"
objOutputChartFormat.chartType = "Area"
objOutputChartFormat.categories = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.values = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.legend = "OFF"

objLogQuery.ExecuteBatch strSQL, objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

Ugly Charts

Using some of the log files from one of my websites, the above samples created the following basic chart:

Taking a look at this chart makes it easy to see why you would want to customize your output; that light blue is pretty awful, and those values are pretty hard to read.

Specifying Configuration Scripts

If you remember the incredibly basic configuration script from earlier, you only need to add one parameter to each example in order to specify the configuration script:

Command-Line:

logparser.exe "SELECT Date, COUNT(*) AS Hits INTO HitsByDay.gif FROM *.log GROUP BY Date ORDER BY Date" -i:W3C -fileType:GIF -groupSize:800x600 -chartType:Area -categories:ON -values:ON -legend:OFF -config:HitsByDay.js

COM Interface:

Option Explicit

Dim objLogQuery, strSQL
Dim objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

Set objLogQuery = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery")
Set objInputW3CFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.W3CInputFormat")
Set objOutputChartFormat = WScript.CreateObject("MSUtil.LogQuery.ChartOutputFormat")

strSQL = "SELECT Date, COUNT(*) AS Hits " & _
    " INTO HitsByDay.gif " & _
    " FROM *.log " & _
    " GROUP BY Date " & _
    " ORDER BY Date"

objOutputChartFormat.groupSize = "800x600"
objOutputChartFormat.fileType = "GIF"
objOutputChartFormat.chartType = "Area"
objOutputChartFormat.categories = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.values = "ON"
objOutputChartFormat.legend = "OFF"
objOutputChartFormat.config = "HitsByDay.js"

objLogQuery.ExecuteBatch strSQL, objInputW3CFormat, objOutputChartFormat

Simple Output

Taking a look at the resulting chart, you can see why I mentioned earlier that the configuration script wasn't very useful; all it does is add a centered title to the bottom of the chart:

Yup - that's a pretty useless sample configuration script for chart customization.

Next...

In my subsequent posts, I'll show how to make this chart (and several other types of charts) look a lot better.

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

Storing IIS 7.5 WebDAV Properties in NTFS Alternate Data Streams

30 December 2011 • by Bob • IIS, Scripting, WebDAV

Two months ago Microsoft published an update for the WebDAV module that shipped with IIS 7.5 in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and this update is documented in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article ID 2593591:

FIX: A hotfix is available that enables WebDAV to store the properties of file resources by using NTFS alternate data streams in IIS 7.5

This update enables administrators to configure the IIS 7.5 WebDAV module to store WebDAV-based properties in NTFS alternate data streams instead of properties.dav files. By way of explanation, WebDAV has two HTTP methods - PROPFIND and PROPPATCH - which enable WebDAV clients to store custom properties on a WebDAV server. These properties may contain anything that makes sense to the WebDAV client. For example, if you were creating a WebDAV client that stored Microsoft Office documents on a WebDAV server, you could store metadata in WebDAV properties for each document, like the author's name, document abstract, etc.

By default, the IIS 7.5 WebDAV module stores properties in system files in each folder of a website that are called properties.dav. These files are essentially text-based INI files that contain the encoded WebDAV properties for the various files in each folder. In contrast, the WebDAV functionality in IIS 6 had used NTFS alternate data streams to store WebDAV properties, which are described in the following Microsoft TechNet article:

The NTFS File System

After we shipped IIS 6, we received a lot of complaints from customers who were losing their WebDAV properties when they were copying their website files between NTFS and FAT file systems. This was expected behavior - NTFS alternate data streams will be removed when you copy files from NTFS to FAT. To remedy this situation, in IIS 7.0 we decided to switch to using INI-based functionality in order to prevent losing custom WebDAV properties when files are copied between disparate file systems.

When we were designing IIS 7.5, we wanted to add optional support for storing WebDAV properties in NTFS alternate data streams, and we wanted to do so because NTFS alternate data streams might perform faster when you are working with larger websites; however, we ran out of time to implement that functionality before we shipped Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. That being said, we still wanted to implement the feature, and the update that I listed at the beginning of this blog contains the functionality that is required to enable storing WebDAV properties in NTFS alternate data streams.

Enabling Alternate Data Streams for WebDAV Properties

The above information is good news for anyone who is storing large quantities of WebDAV properties, so your next logical question might be: "How do I enable NTFS alternate data streams for WebDAV properties ?"

Actually, it's really simple. In the KB article that I listed in the beginning of this blog, I documented two methods that show you how to enable storing WebDAV properties in NTFS alternate data streams:

By modifying your applicationHost.config file
By using AppCmd.exe

For the sake of completeness, I will repost some of the information here. ;-)

Method #1: Modifying your applicationHost.config file

You can enable storing WebDAV properties in alternate data streams for the simple property provider by adding a "useAlternateDataStreams" attribute to the property provider’s registration settings in your applicationHost.config file, which is highlighted in the following global configuration snippet:

<webdav>
  <globalSettings>
    <propertyStores>
      <add name="webdav_simple_prop"
        image="%windir%\system32\inetsrv\webdav_simple_prop.dll"
        image32="%windir%\syswow64\inetsrv\webdav_simple_prop.dll"
        useAlternateDataStreams="true" />
    </propertyStores>
    <lockStores>
      <add name="webdav_simple_lock"
        image="%windir%\system32\inetsrv\webdav_simple_lock.dll"
        image32="%windir%\syswow64\inetsrv\webdav_simple_lock.dll" />
    </lockStores>
  </globalSettings>
  <authoring>
    <locks enabled="true" lockStore="webdav_simple_lock" />
    <properties>
      <clear />
      <add xmlNamespace="*" propertyStore="webdav_simple_prop" />
    </properties>
  </authoring>
  <authoringRules />
</webdav>

Once you have enabled the feature, you have to restart IIS in order for it to take effect.

Method #2: Using AppCmd.exe

I wrote the following batch file for the KB article, which uses AppCmd.exe to enable the NTFS alternate data streams functionality, and it automatically restarts IIS for you:

pushd "%SystemRoot%\System32\Inetsrv" iisreset /stop appcmd.exe set config -section:system.webServer/webdav/globalSettings -propertyStores.[name='webdav_simple_prop'].useAlternateDataStreams:true /commit:apphost iisreset /start popd

Migrating IIS 7 WebDAV Properties into Alternate Data Streams

Once you've enabled storing WebDAV properties in alternate data streams, you are presented with a new challenge: "How do I migrate my existing WebDAV properties?"

Here's the situation, once you have enabled the alternate data streams feature, the WebDAV property provider is going to ignore any properties that have already been set in properties.dav files. With this in mind, I wrote a script that will migrate all of the WebDAV properties from all of the properties.dav files in a website into their corresponding per-file NTFS alternate data streams.

To use the following script, you will need to update the folder path in the third line of the script with the path to your website. Once you have done that, you can run the script to migrate your existing WebDAV properties.

NOTE: You need to run this script as an administrator!

Option Explicit

Dim arrFolderTree, intFolderCount

arrFolderTree = BuildFolderTree("C:\inetpub\wwwroot")

For intFolderCount = 1 To UBound(arrFolderTree)
  MigratePropertiesToADS arrFolderTree(intFolderCount)
Next

Sub MigratePropertiesToADS(strFolderPath)
  On Error Resume Next
  
  ' Declare all our variables
  Dim objTempFSO, objTempFolder
  Dim objTempPropertiesFile, objTempAlternateDataStream
  Dim strTempLine, strTempObjectName, blnTempOpenStream
  Const strTempPropertiesDAV = "\properties.dav"
  Const strTempAlternateDataStream = ":properties.dav:$DATA"

  ' Create a file system object.
  Set objTempFSO = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

  ' Flag the function as having a closed output stream.
  blnTempOpenStream = False

  ' Retrieve a folder object for the path.
  Set objTempFolder = objTempFSO.GetFolder(strFolderPath)

  ' Check for a properties.dav file in the current folder.
  If objTempFSO.FileExists(objTempFolder.Path & strTempPropertiesDAV) Then
    ' Open the properties.dav file for the current folder.
    Set objTempPropertiesFile = objTempFSO.OpenTextFile(objTempFolder.Path & _
      strTempPropertiesDAV,1,False,-1)
    ' Loop through the properties.dav file.
    Do While Not objTempPropertiesFile.AtEndOfStream
      ' Retrieve a line from the properties.dav file.
      strTempLine = Trim(objTempPropertiesFile.ReadLine)
      ' Check if it's a section heading.
      If Left(strTempLine,1) = "[" And Right(strTempLine,1) = "]" Then
        ' Parse the name of the object (file/folder).
        strTempObjectName = Replace(Trim(Mid(strTempLine,2,Len(strTempLine)-2)),"/","\")
        ' Strip off a backslash from the parent folder.
        If Len(strTempObjectName) = 1 Then strTempObjectName = ""
        ' Check to see if the file/folder exists.
        If objTempFSO.FileExists(objTempFolder.Path & _
             strTempObjectName) Or objTempFSO.FolderExists(objTempFolder.Path & _
             strTempObjectName) Then
          ' Create a file object for the alternate data stream.
          Set objTempAlternateDataStream = objTempFSO.CreateTextFile(objTempFolder.Path & _
             strTempObjectName & _
             strTempAlternateDataStream,True,-1)
          ' Write the WebDAV section header.
          objTempAlternateDataStream.WriteLine "[WebDAV]"
          ' Flag the function as having an open output stream.
          blnTempOpenStream = True
        Else
          ' Flag the function as having a closed output stream.
          blnTempOpenStream = False
        End If
      Else
        ' Check if we have an open output stream.
        If blnTempOpenStream = True Then
          ' Output a property.
          objTempAlternateDataStream.WriteLine strTempLine
        End If
      End If
    Loop
    ' Close the properties.dav file.
    objTempPropertiesFile.Close
  End If
  Set objTempFSO = Nothing
End Sub

Function BuildFolderTree(strTempBaseFolder)
  On Error Resume Next

  ' Declare all our variables
  Dim objTempFSO
  Dim objTempFolder
  Dim objTempSubFolder
  Dim lngTempFolderCount
  Dim lngTempBaseCount

  ' Create our file system object.
  Set objTempFSO = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
     
  ' Define the initial values for our folder counters.
  lngTempFolderCount = 1
  lngTempBaseCount = 0
  
  ' Dimension an array to hold the folder names.
  ReDim strTempFolders(1)
  
  ' Store the root folder in our array.
  strTempFolders(lngTempFolderCount) = strTempBaseFolder
    
  ' Loop while we still have folders to process.
  While lngTempFolderCount <> lngTempBaseCount
    ' Set up a folder object to a base folder.
    Set objTempFolder = objTempFSO.GetFolder(strTempFolders(lngTempBaseCount+1))
    ' Loop through the collection of subfolders for the base folder.
    For Each objTempSubFolder In objTempFolder.SubFolders
      ' Increment our folder count.
      lngTempFolderCount = lngTempFolderCount + 1
      ' Increase our array size
      ReDim Preserve strTempFolders(lngTempFolderCount)
      ' Store the folder name in our array.
      strTempFolders(lngTempFolderCount) = objTempSubFolder.Path
    Next
    ' Increment the base folder counter.
    lngTempBaseCount = lngTempBaseCount + 1
  Wend

  ' Return the array of folder names.
  BuildFolderTree = strTempFolders

End Function

In Closing

I have a couple final notes for you to consider:

Enabling NTFS alternate data streams is a global WebDAV setting; you cannot do this on a per-site basis.
As with IIS 6, once you enable storing WebDAV properties in NTFS alternate data streams, you will lose your WebDAV properties if you copy your files between NTFS and FAT file systems.

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

Changing the Identity of the FTP 7 Extensibility Process

01 December 2011 • by Bob • FTP, Extensibility, IIS

Many IIS 7 FTP developers may not have noticed, but all custom FTP 7 extensibility providers execute through COM+ in a DLLHOST.exe process, which runs as NETWORK SERVICE by default. That being said, NETWORK SERVICE does not always have the right permissions to access some of the areas on your system where you may be attempting to implement custom functionality. What this means is, some of the custom features that you try to implement may not work as expected.

For example, if you look at the custom FTP logging provider in following walkthrough, the provider may not have sufficient permissions to create log files in the folder that you specify:

How to Use Managed Code (C#) to Create a Simple FTP Logging Provider

There are a couple of ways that you can resolve this issue:

First of all, you could grant NETWORK SERVICE permissions to the destination folder.
Second, you could change the identity of the FTP extensibility process so that it runs as a user that has permissions for the destination folder.

For what it's worth, I usually change the identity of the FTP 7 extensibility process on my servers so that I can set custom permissions for situations like this.

Here's how you do that:

Create a user account that is only a member of the built-in Guests group, that way you're always using an extremely low-privileged account on your system. (You can also set custom security policies for that account, but that's outside the cope of this blog.)
Open Administrative Tools on your Windows system and double-click Component Services.
Expand Component Services, then expand Computers, then My Computer, and then highlight COM+ Applications.
Right-click Microsoft FTP Publishing Service Extensibility Host and then click Properties.
Click the Identity tab, and then click the This userradio button.
Enter the credentials for the low-privileged user account that you created earlier, and then click OK.

Once you have done this, you can set permissions for this account whenever you need to specify permissions for situations like I described earlier.

Personally, I prefer to change the identity of the FTP 7 extensibility process instead of granting NETWORK SERVICE more permissions than it probably needs.

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

How to use Managed Code (C#) to create an FTP Home Directory Provider that is based on the Remote Client IP Address

02 November 2011 • by Bob • FTP, IIS

I recently had an interesting scenario that was presented to me by a customer: they had a business requirement where they needed to give the same username and password to a group of people, but they didn't want any two people to be able to see anyone else's files. This seemed like an unusual business requirement to me; the whole point of keeping users separate is one of the reasons why we added user isolation to the FTP service.

With that in mind, my first suggestion was - of course - to rethink their business requirement, assign different usernames and passwords to everyone, and use FTP user isolation. But that wasn't going to work for them; their business requirement for giving out the same username and password could not be avoided. So I said that I would get back to them, and I spent the next few days experimenting with a few ideas.

One of my early ideas that seemed somewhat promising was to write a custom home directory provider that dynamically created unique home directories that were based on the session IDs for the individual FTP sessions, and the provider would use those directories to isolate the users. That seemed like a good idea, but when I analyzed the results I quickly saw that it wasn't going to work; as each user logged in, they would get a new session ID, and they wouldn't see their files from their last session. On top of that, the FTP server would rapidly start to collect a large number of session-based directories, with no garbage collection. So it was back to the drawing board for me.

After some discussions with the customer, we reasoned that the best suggestion for their particular environment was to leverage some of the code that I had written for my session-based home directory provider in order to create home directory provider that dynamically created home directories that are based on the remote IP of the FTP client.

I have to stress, however, that this solution will not work in all situations. For example:

If multiple FTP clients are accessing your FTP server through the same firewall, their remote IP might appear to be the same.
If an FTP client is moving between geographic locations, such as traveling with a laptop, then the remote IP address will change, and the client will not see their files from their previous session.

That being said, the customer felt that those limitations were acceptable for their environment, so I created a home directory provider that dynamically created home directories that were based on the remote IP address of their FTP clients. I agree that it's not a perfect solution, but their business requirement made this scenario considerably difficult to work around.

Note: I wrote and tested the steps in this blog using both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2008; if you use an different version of Visual Studio, some of the version-specific steps may need to be changed.

Prerequisites

The following items are required to complete the procedures in this blog:

The following version of IIS must be installed on your Windows computer, and the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager must also be installed:
- IIS 7.0 must be installed on Windows Server 2008
- IIS 7.5 must be installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7
The new FTP 7.5 service must be installed. To install FTP 7.5, follow the instructions in the following topic:
- Installing and Configuring FTP on IIS 7
You must have FTP publishing enabled for a site. To create a new FTP site, follow the instructions in the following topic:
- Creating a New FTP Site
Set the content permissions to allow access for the COM+ process identity that handles extensibility:
- Open a command prompt.
- Type the following command:
```
ICACLS "%SystemDrive%\inetpub\ftproot" /Grant "Network Service":M /T
```
  Where "%SystemDrive%\inetpub\ftproot" is the home directory for your FTP site.
- Close the command prompt.
Note: This last step is necessary for the custom home directory provider to create the isolation directories.

Step 1: Set up the Project Environment

In this step, you will create a project in Microsoft Visual Studio for the demo provider.

Open Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010.
Click the File menu, then New, then Project.
In the New Projectdialog box:
- Choose Visual C# as the project type.
- Choose Class Library as the template.
- Type FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory as the name of the project.
- Click OK.
When the project opens, add a reference path to the FTP extensibility library:
- Click Project, and then click FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory Properties.
- Click the Reference Paths tab.
- Enter the path to the FTP extensibility assembly for your version of Windows, where C: is your operating system drive.
  - For Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista:
    - C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.Web.FtpServer\7.5.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35
  - For 32-bit Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2:
    - C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\IIS
  - For 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2:
    - C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\IIS
- Click Add Folder.
Add a strong name key to the project:
- Click Project, and then click FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory Properties.
- Click the Signing tab.
- Check the Sign the assembly check box.
- Choose <New...> from the strong key name drop-down box.
- Enter FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectoryKey for the key file name.
- If desired, enter a password for the key file; otherwise, clear the Protect my key file with a password check box.
- Click OK.
Note: FTP 7.5 Extensibility does not support the .NET Framework 4.0; if you are using Visual Studio 2010, or you have changed your default framework version, you may need to change the framework version for this project. To do so, use the following steps:
- Click Project, and then click FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory Properties.
- Click the Application tab.
- Choose .NET Framework 3.5 in the Target framework drop-down menu.
- Save, close, and re-open the project.
Optional: You can add a custom build event to add the DLL automatically to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) on your development computer:
- Click Project, and then click FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory Properties.
- Click the Build Events tab.
- Enter the appropriate commands in the Post-build event command linedialog box, depending on your version of Visual Studio:
  - If you are using Visual Studio 2010:
    net stop ftpsvc call "%VS100COMNTOOLS%\vsvars32.bat">null gacutil.exe /if "$(TargetPath)" net start ftpsvc
  - If you are using Visual Studio 2008:
    net stop ftpsvc call "%VS90COMNTOOLS%\vsvars32.bat">null gacutil.exe /if "$(TargetPath)" net start ftpsvc
  Note: You need to be logged in as an administrator in order to restart the FTP service and add the dll to the Global Assembly Cache.
Save the project.

Step 2: Create the Extensibility Class

In this step, you will implement the extensibility interfaces for the demo provider.

Add the necessary references to the project:
- Click Project, and then click Add Reference...
- On the .NET tab, click Microsoft.Web.FtpServer.
- Click OK.

Add the code for the authentication class:

In Solution Explorer, double-click the Class1.cs file.
Remove the existing code.

Paste the following code into the editor:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.IO;
using Microsoft.Web.FtpServer;

public class FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory :
    BaseProvider,
    IFtpHomeDirectoryProvider,
    IFtpLogProvider
{
    // Create a dictionary object that will contain
    // session IDs and remote IP addresses.
    private static Dictionary<string, string> _sessionList = null;

    // Store the path to the default FTP folder.
    private static string _defaultDirectory = string.Empty;

    // Override the default initialization method.
    protected override void Initialize(StringDictionary config)
    {
        // Test if the session dictionary has been created.
        if (_sessionList == null)
        {
            // Create the session dictionary.
            _sessionList = new Dictionary<string, string>();
        }
        // Retrieve the default directory path from configuration.
        _defaultDirectory = config["defaultDirectory"];
        // Test for the default home directory (Required).
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(_defaultDirectory))
        {
            throw new ArgumentException(
              "Missing default directory path in configuration.");
        }
    }

    // Define the home directory provider method.
    string IFtpHomeDirectoryProvider.GetUserHomeDirectoryData(
        string sessionId,
        string siteName,
        string userName)
    {
        // Create a string with the folder name.
        string _sessionDirectory = String.Format(
            @"{0}\{1}", _defaultDirectory,
            _sessionList[sessionId]);
        try
        {
            // Test if the folder already exists.
            if (!Directory.Exists(_sessionDirectory))
            {
                // Create the physical folder. Note: NETWORK SERVICE
                // needs write permissions to the default folder in
                // order to create each remote IP's home directory.
                Directory.CreateDirectory(_sessionDirectory);
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            throw ex;
        }
        // Return the path to the session folder.
        return _sessionDirectory;
    }
    // Define the log provider method.
    public void Log(FtpLogEntry logEntry)
    {
        // Test if the USER command was entered.
        if (logEntry.Command.Equals(
            "USER",
            StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
        {
            // Reformat the remote IP address.
            string _remoteIp = logEntry.RemoteIPAddress
                .Replace(':', '-')
                .Replace('.', '-');
            // Add the remote IP address to the session dictionary.
            _sessionList.Add(logEntry.SessionId, _remoteIp);
        }
        // Test if the command channel was closed (end of session).
        if (logEntry.Command.Equals(
            "CommandChannelClosed",
            StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
        {
            // Remove the closed session from the dictionary.
            _sessionList.Remove(logEntry.SessionId);
        }
    }
}

Save and compile the project.

Note: If you did not use the optional steps to register the assemblies in the GAC, you will need to manually copy the assemblies to your IIS 7 computer and add the assemblies to the GAC using the Gacutil.exe tool. For more information, see the following topic on the Microsoft MSDN Web site:

Global Assembly Cache Tool (Gacutil.exe)

Step 3: Add the Demo Provider to FTP

In this step, you will add your provider to the global list of custom providers for your FTP service, configure your provider's settings, and enable your provider for an FTP site.

Adding your Provider to FTP

Determine the assembly information for your extensibility provider:
- In Windows Explorer, open your "C:\Windows\assembly" path, where C: is your operating system drive.
- Locate the FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory assembly.
- Right-click the assembly, and then click Properties.
- Copy the Culture value; for example: Neutral.
- Copy the Version number; for example: 1.0.0.0.
- Copy the Public Key Token value; for example: 426f62526f636b73.
- Click Cancel.
Add the extensibility provider to the global list of FTP authentication providers:
- Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
- Click your computer name in the Connections pane.
- Double-click FTP Authentication in the main window.
- Click Custom Providers... in the Actions pane.
- Click Register.
- Enter FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory for the provider Name.
- Click Managed Provider (.NET).
- Enter the assembly information for the extensibility provider using the information that you copied earlier. For example:
  FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory,FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory,version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=426f62526f636b73
- Click OK.
- Clear the FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory check box in the providers list.
- Click OK.

Note: If you prefer, you could use the command line to add the provider to FTP by using syntax like the following example:

cd %SystemRoot%\System32\Inetsrv appcmd.exe set config -section:system.ftpServer/providerDefinitions /+"[name='FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory',type='FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory,FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory,version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=426f62526f636b73']" /commit:apphost

Configuring your Provider's Settings

At the moment there is no user interface that allows you to configure properties for a custom home directory provider, so you will have to use the following command line:

cd %SystemRoot%\System32\Inetsrv appcmd.exe set config -section:system.ftpServer/providerDefinitions /+"activation.[name='FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory']" /commit:apphost appcmd.exe set config -section:system.ftpServer/providerDefinitions /+"activation.[name='FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory'].[key='defaultDirectory',value='C:\Inetpub\ftproot']" /commit:apphost

Note: The highlighted area contains the value that you need to update with the root directory of your FTP site.

Enabling your Provider for an FTP site

At the moment there is no user interface that allows you to enable a custom home directory provider for an FTP site, so you will have to use the following command line:

cd %SystemRoot%\System32\Inetsrv appcmd.exe set config -section:system.applicationHost/sites /+"[name='My FTP Site'].ftpServer.customFeatures.providers.[name='FtpRemoteIPHomeDirectory']" /commit:apphost appcmd.exe set config -section:system.applicationHost/sites /"[name='My FTP Site'].ftpServer.userIsolation.mode:Custom" /commit:apphost

Note: The highlighted areas contain the name of the FTP site where you want to enable the custom home directory provider.

Summary

In this blog I showed you how to:

Create a project in Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2008 for a custom FTP home directory provider.
Implement the extensibility interface for custom FTP home directories.
Add a custom home directory provider to your FTP service.

When users connect to your FTP site, the FTP service will create a directory that is based on their remote IP address, and it will drop their session in the corresponding folder for their remote IP address. They will not be able to change to the root directory, or a directory for a different remote IP address.

For example, if the root directory for your FTP site is "C:\Inetpub\ftproot" and a client connects to your FTP site from 192.168.0.100, the FTP home directory provider will create a folder that is named "C:\Inetpub\ftproot\192-168-0-100", and the FTP client's sessions will be isolated in that directory; the FTP client will not be able to change directory to "C:\Inetpub\ftproot" or the home directory for another remote IP.

Once again, there are limitations to this approach, and I agree that it's not a perfect solution in all scenarios; but this provider works as expected when you have to use the same username and password for all of your FTP clients, and you know that your FTP clients will use unique remote IP addresses.

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

How to create an HTML Application to configure your WebDAV Redirector settings

07 October 2011 • by Bob • IIS, Scripting, WebDAV

I've mentioned in previous blog posts that I use the Windows WebDAV Redirector a lot. (And believe me, I use it a lot.) Having said that, there are a lot of registry settings that control how the Windows WebDAV Redirector operates, and I tend to tweak those settings fairly often.

I documented all of those registry settings in my Using the WebDAV Redirector walkthrough, but unfortunately there isn't a built-in interface for managing the settings. With that in mind, I decided to write my own user interface.

I knew that it would be pretty simple to create a basic Windows Form application that does everything, but my trouble is that I would want to share the code in a blog, and the steps create a Windows application are probably more than I would want to write in such a short space. So I decided to reach into my scripting past and create an HTML Application for Windows that configures all of the Windows WebDAV Redirector settings.

It should be noted, like everything else these days, that this code is provided as-is. ;-]

Using the HTML Application

When you run the application, it will present you with the following user interface, which allows you to configure most of the useful Windows WebDAV Redirector settings:

Creating the HTML Application

To create this HTML Application, save the following HTMLA code as "WebDAV Redirector Settings.hta" to your computer, and then double-click its icon to run the application.

<html>

<head>
<title>WebDAV Redirector Settings</title>
<HTA:APPLICATION
  APPLICATIONNAME="WebDAV Redirector Settings"
  ID="WebDAV Redirector Settings"
  VERSION="1.0"
  BORDER="dialog"
  BORDERSTYLE="static"
  INNERBORDER="no"
  SYSMENU="no"
  MAXIMIZEBUTTON="no"
  MINIMIZEBUTTON="no"
  SCROLL="no"
  SCROLLFLAT="yes"
  SINGLEINSTANCE="yes"
  CONTEXTMENU="no"
  SELECTION="no"/>

<script language="vbscript">
' ----------------------------------------
' Start of main code section.
' ----------------------------------------

Option Explicit

Const intDialogWidth = 700
Const intDialogHeight = 620
Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002
Const strWebClientKeyPath = "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters"
Const strLuaKeyPath = "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System"
Dim objRegistry
Dim blnHasChanges

' ----------------------------------------
' Start the application.
' ----------------------------------------

Sub Window_OnLoad
  On Error Resume Next
  ' Set up the UI dimensions.
  Self.resizeTo intDialogWidth,intDialogHeight
  Self.moveTo (Screen.AvailWidth - intDialogWidth) / 2, _
    (Screen.AvailHeight - intDialogHeight) / 2
  ' Retrieve the current settings.
  Document.all.TheBody.ClassName = "hide"
  Set objRegistry = GetObject( _
    "winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\.\root\default:StdRegProv")
  Call CheckForLUA()
  Call GetValues()
  Document.All.TheBody.ClassName = "show"
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' Check for User Access Control
' ----------------------------------------

Sub CheckForLUA()
  If GetRegistryDWORD(strLuaKeyPath,"EnableLUA",1)<> 0 Then
    MsgBox "User Access Control (UAC) is enabled on this computer." & _
      vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "UAC must be disabled in order to edit " & _
      "the registry and restart the service for the WebDAV Redirector. " & _
      "Please disable UAC before running this application again. " & _
      "This application will now exit.", _
      vbCritical, "User Access Control"
    Self.close
  End If 
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' Exit the application.
' ----------------------------------------

Sub ExitApplication()
  If blnHasChanges = False Then
    If MsgBox("Are you sure you want to exit?", _
      vbQuestion Or vbYesNo Or vbDefaultButton2, _
      "Exit Application") = vbNo Then
      Exit Sub
    End If
  Else
    Dim intRetVal
    intRetVal = MsgBox("You have unsaved changes. " & _
      "Do you want to save them before you exit?", _
      vbQuestion Or vbYesNoCancel Or vbDefaultButton1, _
      "Exit Application")
    If intRetVal = vbYes Then
      Call SetValues()
    ElseIf intRetVal = vbCancel Then
      Exit Sub
    End If
  End If
  Self.close
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' Flag the application as having changes.
' ----------------------------------------

Sub FlagChanges()
  blnHasChanges = True
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' Retrieve the settings from the registry.
' ----------------------------------------

Sub GetValues()
  On Error Resume Next
  Dim tmpCount,tmpArray,tmpString
  ' Get the radio button values
  Call SetRadioValue(Document.all.BasicAuthLevel, _
    GetRegistryDWORD(strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "BasicAuthLevel",1))
  Call SetRadioValue(Document.all.SupportLocking, _
    GetRegistryDWORD(strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "SupportLocking",1))
  ' Get the text box values
  Document.all.InternetServerTimeoutInSec.Value = _
    GetRegistryDWORD(strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "InternetServerTimeoutInSec",30)
  Document.all.FileAttributesLimitInBytes.Value = _
    GetRegistryDWORD(strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "FileAttributesLimitInBytes",1000000)
  Document.all.FileSizeLimitInBytes.Value = _
    GetRegistryDWORD(strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "FileSizeLimitInBytes",50000000)
  Document.all.LocalServerTimeoutInSec.Value = _
    GetRegistryDWORD(strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "LocalServerTimeoutInSec",15)
  Document.all.SendReceiveTimeoutInSec.Value = _
    GetRegistryDWORD(strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "SendReceiveTimeoutInSec",60)
  Document.all.ServerNotFoundCacheLifeTimeInSec.Value = _
    GetRegistryDWORD(strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "ServerNotFoundCacheLifeTimeInSec",60)
  ' Get the text area values
  tmpArray = GetRegistryMULTISZ( _
    strWebClientKeyPath,"AuthForwardServerList")
  For tmpCount = 0 To UBound(tmpArray)
    tmpString = tmpString & tmpArray(tmpCount) & vbTab
  Next
  If Len(tmpString)>0 Then
    Document.all.AuthForwardServerList.Value = _
      Replace(Left(tmpString,Len(tmpString)-1),vbTab,vbCrLf)
  End If
  blnHasChanges = False
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' Save the settings in the registry.
' ----------------------------------------

Sub SetValues()
  On Error Resume Next
  ' Set the radio button values
  Call SetRegistryDWORD( _
    strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "BasicAuthLevel", _
    GetRadioValue(Document.all.BasicAuthLevel))
  Call SetRegistryDWORD( _
    strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "SupportLocking", _
    GetRadioValue(Document.all.SupportLocking))
  ' Set the text box values
  Call SetRegistryDWORD( _
    strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "InternetServerTimeoutInSec", _
    Document.all.InternetServerTimeoutInSec.Value)
  Call SetRegistryDWORD( _
    strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "FileAttributesLimitInBytes", _
    Document.all.FileAttributesLimitInBytes.Value)
  Call SetRegistryDWORD( _
    strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "FileSizeLimitInBytes", _
    Document.all.FileSizeLimitInBytes.Value)
  Call SetRegistryDWORD( _
    strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "LocalServerTimeoutInSec", _
    Document.all.LocalServerTimeoutInSec.Value)
  Call SetRegistryDWORD( _
    strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "SendReceiveTimeoutInSec", _
    Document.all.SendReceiveTimeoutInSec.Value)
  Call SetRegistryDWORD( _
    strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "ServerNotFoundCacheLifeTimeInSec", _
    Document.all.ServerNotFoundCacheLifeTimeInSec.Value)
  ' Set the text area values
  Call SetRegistryMULTISZ( _
    strWebClientKeyPath, _
    "AuthForwardServerList", _
    Split(Document.all.AuthForwardServerList.Value,vbCrLf))
  ' Prompt to restart the WebClient service
  If MsgBox("Do you want to restart the WebDAV Redirector " & _
    "service so your settings will take effect?", _
    vbQuestion Or vbYesNo Or vbDefaultButton2, _
    "Restart WebDAV Redirector") = vbYes Then
    ' Restart the WebClient service.
    Call RestartWebClient()
  End If
  Call GetValues()
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' Start the WebClient service.
' ----------------------------------------

Sub RestartWebClient()
  On Error Resume Next
  Dim objWMIService,colServices,objService
  Document.All.TheBody.ClassName = "hide"
  Set objWMIService = GetObject( _
    "winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\.\root\cimv2")
  Set colServices = objWMIService.ExecQuery( _
    "Select * from Win32_Service Where Name='WebClient'")
  For Each objService in colServices
    objService.StopService()
    objService.StartService()
  Next
  Document.All.TheBody.ClassName = "show"
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' Retrieve a DWORD value from the registry.
' ----------------------------------------

Function GetRegistryDWORD( _
    ByVal tmpKeyPath, _
    ByVal tmpValueName, _
    ByVal tmpDefaultValue)
  On Error Resume Next
  Dim tmpDwordValue
  If objRegistry.GetDWORDValue( _
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, _
      tmpKeyPath, _
      tmpValueName, _
      tmpDwordValue)=0 Then
    GetRegistryDWORD = CLng(tmpDwordValue)
  Else
    GetRegistryDWORD = CLng(tmpDefaultValue)
  End If
End Function

' ----------------------------------------
' Set a DWORD value in the registry.
' ----------------------------------------

Sub SetRegistryDWORD( _
    ByVal tmpKeyPath, _
    ByVal tmpValueName, _
    ByVal tmpDwordValue)
  On Error Resume Next
  Call objRegistry.SetDWORDValue( _
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, _
    tmpKeyPath, _
    tmpValueName, _
    CLng(tmpDwordValue))
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' Retrieve a MULTISZ value from the registry.
' ----------------------------------------

Function GetRegistryMULTISZ( _
    ByVal tmpKeyPath, _
    ByVal tmpValueName)
  On Error Resume Next
  Dim tmpMultiSzValue
  If objRegistry.GetMultiStringValue( _
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, _
      tmpKeyPath, _
      tmpValueName, _
      tmpMultiSzValue)=0 Then
    GetRegistryMULTISZ = tmpMultiSzValue
  Else
    GetRegistryMULTISZ = Array()
  End If
End Function

' ----------------------------------------
' Set a MULTISZ value in the registry.
' ----------------------------------------

Sub SetRegistryMULTISZ( _
    ByVal tmpKeyPath, _
    ByVal tmpValueName, _
    ByVal tmpMultiSzValue)
  On Error Resume Next
  Call objRegistry.SetMultiStringValue( _
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, _
    tmpKeyPath, _
    tmpValueName, _
    tmpMultiSzValue)
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' Retrieve the value of a radio button group.
' ----------------------------------------

Function GetRadioValue(ByVal tmpRadio)
  On Error Resume Next
  Dim tmpCount
  For tmpCount = 0 To (tmpRadio.Length-1)
    If tmpRadio(tmpCount).Checked Then
      GetRadioValue = CLng(tmpRadio(tmpCount).Value)
      Exit For
    End If
  Next
End Function

' ----------------------------------------
' Set the value for a radio button group.
' ----------------------------------------

Sub SetRadioValue(ByVal tmpRadio, ByVal tmpValue)
  On Error Resume Next
  Dim tmpCount
  For tmpCount = 0 To (tmpRadio.Length-1)
    If CLng(tmpRadio(tmpCount).Value) = CLng(tmpValue) Then
      tmpRadio(tmpCount).Checked = True
      Exit For
    End If
  Next
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
'
' ----------------------------------------

Sub Validate(tmpField)
  Dim tmpRegEx, tmpMatches
  Set tmpRegEx = New RegExp
  tmpRegEx.Pattern = "[0-9]"
  tmpRegEx.IgnoreCase = True
  tmpRegEx.Global = True
  Set tmpMatches = tmpRegEx.Execute(tmpField.Value)
  If tmpMatches.Count = Len(CStr(tmpField.Value)) Then
    If CDbl(tmpField.Value) => 0 And _
      CDbl(tmpField.Value) =< 4294967295 Then
      Exit Sub
    End If
  End If
  MsgBox "Please enter a whole number between 0 and 4294967295.", _
    vbCritical, "Validation Error"
  tmpField.Focus
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
'
' ----------------------------------------

Sub BasicAuthWarning()
  MsgBox "WARNING:" & vbCrLf  & vbCrLf & _
    "Using Basic Authentication over non-SSL connections can cause " & _
    "serious security issues. Usernames and passwords are transmitted " & _
    "in clear text, therefore the use of Basic Authentication with " & _
    "WebDAV is disabled by default for non-SSL connections. That " & _
    "being said, this setting can override the default behavior for " & _
    "Basic Authentication, but it is strongly discouraged.", _
    vbCritical, "Basic Authentication Warning"
End Sub

' ----------------------------------------
' End of main code section.
' ----------------------------------------

</script>
<style>
body { color:#000000; background-color:#cccccc;
  font-family:'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,Arial; font-size:9pt; }
fieldset { padding:10px; width:640px; }
.button { width:150px; }
.textbox { width:200px; height:22px; text-align:right; }
.textarea { width:300px; height:50px; text-align:left; }
.radio { margin-left:-5px; margin-top: -2px; }
.hide { display:none; }
.show { display:block; }
select { width:300px; text-align:left; }
table { border-collapse:collapse; empty-cells:hide; }
h1 { font-size:14pt; }
th { font-size:9pt; text-align:left; vertical-align:top; padding:2px; }
td { font-size:9pt; text-align:left; vertical-align:top; padding:2px; }
big { font-size:11pt; }
small { font-size:8pt; }
</style>
</head>

<body id="TheBody" class="hide">

<h1 align="center" id="TheTitle" style="margin-bottom:-20px;">WebDAV Redirector Settings</h1>
<div align="center">
<p style="margin-bottom:-20px;"><i><small><b>Note</b>: See <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.microsoft.com/iis/publish/using-webdav/using-the-webdav-redirector/">Using the WebDAV Redirector</a> for additional details.</small></i></p>
  <form>
    <center>
    <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width:600px;">
      <tr>
        <td style="width:600px;text-align:left"><fieldset title="Security Settings">
        <legend>&nbsp;<b>Security Settings</b>&nbsp;</legend>
        These values affect the security behavior for the WebDAV Redirector.<br>
        <table style="width:600px;">
          <tr title="Specifies whether the WebDAV Redirector can use Basic Authentication to communicate with a server.">
            <td style="width:300px">
            <table border="0">
              <tr>
                <td style="width:300px"><b>Basic Authentication Level</b></td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td style="width:300px;"><span style="width:280px;padding-left:20px;"><small><i><b>Note</b>: Using basic authentication can cause <u>serious security issues</u> as the username and password are transmitted in clear text, therefore the use of basic authentication over WebDAV is disabled by default unless the connection is using SSL.</i></small></span></td>
              </tr>
            </table>
            </td>
            <td style="width:300px">
            <table style="width:300px">
              <tr>
                <td style="width:020px"><input class="radio" type="radio" value="0" name="BasicAuthLevel" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" id="BasicAuthLevel0"></td>
                <td style="width:280px"><label for="BasicAuthLevel0">Basic Authentication is disabled</label></td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td style="width:020px"><input class="radio" type="radio" value="1" checked name="BasicAuthLevel" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" id="BasicAuthLevel1"></td>
                <td style="width:280px"><label for="BasicAuthLevel1">Basic Authentication is enabled for SSL web sites only</label></td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td style="width:020px"><input class="radio" type="radio" value="2" name="BasicAuthLevel" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" id="BasicAuthLevel2" onClick="VBScript:BasicAuthWarning()"></td>
                <td style="width:280px"><label for="BasicAuthLevel2">Basic Authentication is enabled for SSL and non-SSL web sites</label></td>
              </tr>
            </table>
            </td>
          </tr>
          <tr title="Specifies a list of local URLs for forwarding credentials that bypasses any proxy settings. (Note: This requires Windows Vista SP1 or later.)">
            <td style="width:300px">
            <table border="0">
              <tr>
                <td style="width:300px"><b>Authentication Forwarding Server List</b></td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td style="width:300px;"><span style="width:280px;padding-left:20px;"><small><i><b>Note</b>: Include one server name per line.</i></small></span></td>
              </tr>
            </table>
            </td>
            <td style="width:300px"><textarea class="textarea" name="AuthForwardServerList" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()"></textarea></td>
          </tr>
          <tr title="Specifies whether the WebDAV Redirector supports locking.">
            <td style="width:300px"><b>Support for WebDAV Locking</b></td>
            <td style="width:300px">
            <table style="width:300px">
              <tr>
                <td style="width:020px"><input class="radio" type="radio" value="1" checked name="SupportLocking" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" id="SupportLocking1"></td>
                <td style="width:280px"><label for="SupportLocking1">Enable Lock Support</label></td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td style="width:020px"><input class="radio" type="radio" value="0" name="SupportLocking" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" id="SupportLocking0"></td>
                <td style="width:280px"><label for="SupportLocking0">Disable Lock Support</label></td>
              </tr>
            </table>
            </td>
          </tr>
        </table>
        </fieldset> </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td style="width:600px;text-align:left"><fieldset title="Time-outs">
        <legend>&nbsp;<b>Time-outs and Maximum Sizes</b>&nbsp;</legend>
        These values affect the behavior for WebDAV Client/Server operations.<br>
        <table border="0" style="width:600px;">
          <tr title="Specifies the connection time-out for the WebDAV Redirector uses when communicating with non-local WebDAV servers.">
            <td style="width:300px"><b>Internet Server Time-out</b> <small>(In Seconds)</small></td>
            <td style="width:300px"><input class="textbox" type="text" name="InternetServerTimeoutInSec" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" onblur="VBScript:Validate(Me)" value="30"></td>
          </tr>
          <tr title="Specifies the connection time-out for the WebDAV Redirector uses when communicating with a local WebDAV server.">
            <td style="width:300px"><b>Local Server Time-out</b> <small>(In Seconds)</small></td>
            <td style="width:300px"><input class="textbox" type="text" name="LocalServerTimeoutInSec" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" onblur="VBScript:Validate(Me)" value="15"></td>
          </tr>
          <tr title="Specifies the time-out in seconds that the WebDAV Redirector uses after issuing a request.">
            <td style="width:300px"><b>Send/Receive Time-out</b> <small>(In Seconds)</small></td>
            <td style="width:300px"><input class="textbox" type="text" name="SendReceiveTimeoutInSec" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" onblur="VBScript:Validate(Me)" value="60"></td>
          </tr>
          <tr title="Specifies the period of time that a server is cached as non-WebDAV by the WebDAV Redirector. If a server is found in this list, a fail is returned immediately without attempting to contact the server.">
            <td style="width:300px"><b>Server Not Found Cache Time-out</b> <small>(In Seconds)</small></td>
            <td style="width:300px"><input class="textbox" type="text" name="ServerNotFoundCacheLifeTimeInSec" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" onblur="VBScript:Validate(Me)" value="60"></td>
          </tr>
          <tr title="Specifies the maximum size in bytes that the WebDAV Redirector allows for file transfers.">
            <td style="width:300px"><b>Maximum File Size</b> <small>(In Bytes)</small></td>
            <td style="width:300px"><input class="textbox" type="text" name="FileSizeLimitInBytes" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" onblur="VBScript:Validate(Me)" value="50000000"></td>
          </tr>
          <tr title="Specifies the maximum size that is allowed by the WebDAV Redirector for all properties on a specific collection.">
            <td style="width:300px"><b>Maximum Attributes Size</b> <small>(In Bytes)</small></td>
            <td style="width:300px"><input class="textbox" type="text" name="FileAttributesLimitInBytes" onchange="VBScript:FlagChanges()" onblur="VBScript:Validate(Me)" value="1000000"></td>
          </tr>
        </table>
        </fieldset> </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td style="text-align:center">
        <table border="0">
          <tr>
            <td style="text-align:center"><input class="button" type="button" value="Apply Settings" onclick="VBScript:SetValues()">
            <td style="text-align:center"><input class="button" type="button" value="Exit Application" onclick="VBScript:ExitApplication()">
          </tr>
        </table>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    </center>
  </form>
</div>

</body>

</html>

Additional Notes

You will need to run this HTML Application as an administrator in order to save the settings and restart the Windows WebDAV Redirector. (Which is listed as the "WebClient" service in your Administrative Tools.)

This HTML Application performs basic validation for the numeric fields, and it prevents you from exiting the application when you have unsaved changes, but apart from that there's not much functionality other than setting and retrieving the registry values. How else can you get away with posting an application in a blog with only 500 lines of code and no compilation required? ;-]

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

IIS 6: Setting up SSL - Appendix C: Processing a Certificate Request using Windows 2003 Certificate Services

03 August 2011 • by Bob • IIS, SSL

In this last appendix for my blog series about using SSL with IIS 6, I'll discuss processing a certificate request by using Windows 2003 Certificate Services. When you are running a certificate server for your network environment, you will need to physically issue the certificates that clients will request from your certificate server. There is a way that you can configure certificate services to automatically issue certificates, but I'd advise against that, unless you are only issuing certificates for testing purposes. If so, then you should read the Set the default action upon receipt of a certificate request topic on Microsoft's TechNet website.

That being said, the procedure to approve and issue a certificate is relatively easy; to do so, use the following steps:

Open the "Certificate Authority" administrative tool:
Click on "Pending Requests":
Right-click the pending request and choose "All Tasks", then click "Issue":
The certificate will now show up under "Issued Certificates":

That wraps up the last post in this blog series about using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) with IIS 6.0, as well as some related information about using Windows 2003 Certificate Services. I hope this information helps administrators that have yet to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2. ;-]

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

IIS 6: Setting up SSL - Appendix B: Obtaining a Root Certificate from Windows Server 2003 Certificate Services

29 July 2011 • by Bob • IIS, SSL

In this second appendix for my blog series about using SSL with IIS 6, I'm going to discuss obtaining the root certificate from Windows Server 2003 Certificate Services. By way of explanation, obtaining a root certificate is one of the most important steps for servers or clients that will use certificates that you issue. While this step is not necessary on the server where you installed Certificate Services, it is absolutely essential on your other servers or clients, because this step will allow those computers to trust your certificate server as a Certificate Authority (CA). Without that trust in place, you will either receive error messages or SSL simply won't work.

I've broken this process into two steps:

Downloading the Root Certificate
Installing the Root Certificate

Downloading the Root Certificate

Browse to your certificate server's address, (e.g. http://<server-name>/certsrv/), and choose to retrieve the CA certificate:
Click the link to download the CA certificate:
Choose to save the certificate file to disk:
Save the file to your desktop:

Note: If you were to bring up the properties for the root certificate, the certificate's icon should show an error; this is because the certificate has not been imported.

Installing the Root Certificate

Before using any certificates that you issue on a computer, you need to install the Root Certificate. (This includes web servers and clients.)

Double-click the file on your desktop:
Click the "Install Certificate" button:
Click "Next" to start the Certificate Import Wizard:
Choose to automatically choose the store:
Click the "Finish" button:
Click "Yes" when asked if you want to add the certificate:
NOTE: This step is very important. If you do not see this dialog, something went wrong, and you may need to manually place the certificate in the correct store.
Click "OK" when informed that the import was successful.

Note: If you were to bring up the properties for the root certificate after you have installed it on your computer, you should see that the icon for the certificate no longer shows an error.

That's it for this post. In my next blog post, I'll discuss processing a certificate request.

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/

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