Hi all,

I've posted my White Paper for the Virtual Fox Fest session on the Web Connection blog.

Building and Consuming REST API Services

Be forwarned this is a very long read 😄 that covers a lot of aspects of both the concepts and the practical implementation of both client and server using Visual FoxPro.

The paper also links to the session slides, samples and the actual online session video.

Enjoy,

+++ Rick ---

Thank You Rick!

Hi Rick, Thanks for this excellent presentation. I'm not all that familiar with GitHub - don't see where I can download the Sample Files - I see a list but no Download Button.

Marshal

It's a GitHub source code repository so it's meant to be cloned and used via Git synchronization.

But you can also used the Code button, then choose Download Zip to download a snapshot of the repository.

+++ Rick ---

Found the Code/Download Button/Link - Thank you!

When viewing this White Paper (in Chrome), am unable to scroll the Topic Links section on the Right - it stops at the Generic Rest Service Client link.

Yeah the list is too long 😄. You have to scroll the page to see the bottom of the list...

In the conference video you mentioned that the JsonSerializer utilizes .Net functionality. A long time user of West Wind Client Tools, have used DotnetBridge as part of automating E-Mailing from my VFP applications.

What (current) articles/documentation would you recommend which explain how to integrate VFP with .Net? (I have only a limited amount of experience with Visual Studio)

Thanks in advance

Marshal

P.S. Is there a way to see all messages for a particular Forum?

Just an FYI: The GitHub link to Music Store Business Objects in the section on Creating a REST Service with Web Connection is broken.

Marshal

How does one handle 2 Factor Authorization with REST?

You need to use a service like Twillio or SendGrid to send notifications via SMS or Third party authenticator like Authy or Microsoft or Google Authenticator. Be aware that this is usually not cheap with a per request fee for every SMS or Authenticator authentication sent. Worth it if you have a paying service that covers the cost but for casual sites this is usually prohibitively expensive.

The programming process to a direct service integration with SMS or Authenticator is basically the same as it is for doing Email validation and in fact if you want an el-cheapo way to do this you can do factor authentication with a second email address for the recovery (which is hokey but would provide the same level of protection).

There are also services like ZeroAuth that can handle the entire user authentication process as a service that you call from your application. They'll manage the user authentication completely on their end including optionally two-factor auth, and you essentially use a JavaScript client to trigger the authentication and get a callback when completed. As a bonus this also lets you use social media and developer accounts (ie. Twitter, Facebook, Google, GitHub, etc.) as well as email based accounts. Your application then manages the auth token (via cookie in the app) and you can map it to your customer/user etc. This is a great way to go, but again - it's pricey with each logon being a charge. You still need to integrate with the service which is still complex because it involves callbacks for the tokens, but the benefit is that you get all these services in one implementation and you can pile on features like two-factor auth for a price.

Security is difficult, whether you do it yourself, or whether you integrated with existing solution. In my experience, it's often the most complex bit of UI/Web code in any application to implement and maintain.

+++ Rick ---