I’ve been working on a C# Library to make hashing strings an easy (and fun?) task. I’ll show you the very basic bare-bones usage here:

Hashing mudkipz = new Hashing();
string m5 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string s1 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string s256 = mudkipz.sha256("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string s384 = mudkipz.sha384("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string s512 = mudkipz.sha512("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");

The library currently supports md5, sha1, sha256, sha384, and sha512. So yeah that’s all nice and easy to use and such but it there more? Yes, there is! There are four different formats your string can be hashed into:

1. AB-CD-EF (default)
2. ab-cd-ef
3. ABCDEF
4. abcdef

For any of you that have used PHP’s hashing functions you’ll notice that format number 4 is identical. Let’s say you want to have everything be formatted like PHP does. Using format 4.

Hashing mudkipz = new Hashing();
mudkipz.setFormat(4);
string blah1 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string blah2 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");

You’ll notice that both strings will be formatted in the same way PHP would. We can switch back in the middle too.

Hashing mudkipz = new Hashing();
mudkipz.setFormat(4);
string blah1 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string blah2 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
mudkipz.setFormat(1);
string blah3 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string blah4 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");

What if you want everything to be formatted with format 3 except for just one? Ya know, the odd man out. Instead of switching default formats you can just specify a extra format parameter.

Hashing mudkipz = new Hashing();
mudkipz.setFormat(3);
string blah1 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string blah2 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.", 4);
string blah3 = mudkipz.sha256("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");

blah2 would then be formatted using format 4. All the others would use format 3.

That’s just about it. It’s licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. A link back would be nice, but not necessary. Use the following links to download. Enjoy!

Let’s get down to business. Create a new blank text file called robots.txt in the root directory of your site. Put the following text into it exactly as you see it below.

User-agent: * Disallow: /

This should keep all search engine bots from indexing all pages past that point. If your site is already indexed though, it might become more problematic.

What do you think of it? I’m gonna buy it. Eventually.

It really is that simple. Perfect for your *-Roll sites.

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses “objects” – data structures consisting of datafields and methods – and their interactions to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as information hiding, data abstraction, encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, and inheritance. It was not commonly used in mainstream software application development until the early 1990s. Many modern programming languages now support OOP.
(Source)

Today I’m going to show you the very basic of programming OOP style in PHP5.

Let’s create two files. One named “index.php”, and the other named “class.php”, which is where our php class will go.

Object Oriented Programming’s world orbits around PHP classes. These define and help layout it’s child objects.

Go ahead and open up your favorite code editor and put the following code into your class.php file. Copy & Paste will do, but you might get a better feel for the code if you type it by hand.

<?php
class Text {
   var $savedText;
   function setText($someText) {
      $this->savedText = $someText;
   }
   function getText() {
      return $this->savedText;
   }
}
?>

Let’s walk through what just happened there. On line 2 we opened a new class definition named Text. Line 3 made a new internal variable. These variables can be accessed from anywhere inside the class. Lines 4-6 creates a new method called setText. This method gives the $savedText variable the value of $someText. Lines 7-9 create a new method called getText and it returns back whatever the value of $savedText is.

You may be wondering what the $this-> thing is. When used within a class it let’s you access variables and methods from within itself.

Go ahead and open up index.php and paste this into it.

<?php
include('class.php');
$TextClass = new Text();
$TextClass->setText('Hello there!');
echo $TextClass->getText();
?>

Go ahead and run that. You should get “Hello there!” printed to the screen. On line 2 we included the class file so we can use it. On line 3 we created a new instance of the class and assigned it to a variable called $TextClass. On line 4 we set the internal $savedText variable to ‘Hello there!’ via the setText method. On line 5 we printed the result of getText to the screen.

Hopefully you’ve learned the very basics of OOP in PHP. I might write another one of these if I have the time.

CakePHP, unfortunatly, just doesn’t wanna get along with the new PHP release. Right now there are two solutions. The first is to revert back to PHP 5.2.9-2. The second is to change error_reporting(E_ALL); on line 295 of cake/libs/configure.php to error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_DEPRECATED); After that, then add error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_DEPRECATED); to the beginning of app/webroot/index.php. As far as I know, these are the only two solutions for CakePHP users, at the moment. If you know of either a better solution or more information, please comment!

Hopefully I covered some of the basics of the fairly new PHP 5.3.0 with CakePHP.

PS: Thanks to danielryan on Flickr for the screenshot.

Regex.Replace(BitConverter.ToString(hashedBytes), "-", "");

Hashing in C# is quite a bit different then languages like PHP. In PHP to hash a string via MD5 you would simply use the md5 function as so:

md5("string")

Let’s stop complaining and get right down to it.

Create  a new Console project in either MS Visual C# or Mono. Make a new class after your main one. We’ll call it Hasher. Add the following to the top of your file.

using System.Security.Cryptography;

Now add the following code to your Hasher class

public string Hash(string originalString)
{
Byte[] originalBytes;
Byte[] hashedBytes;
System.Security.Cryptography.MD5 md5;
md5 = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();
originalBytes = ASCIIEncoding.Default.GetBytes(originalPassword);
encodedBytes = md5.ComputeHash(originalBytes);
return BitConverter.ToString(hashedBytes);
}

I won’t explain this in much detail. Mainly for the reason that it’s fairly simple and for the most part self explanatory.

Now we need to make the front end. Add the following to your Main class.

Console.Write("Enter your string: ");
string text = Console.ReadLine();
Hasher crypt = new Hasher();
string md5 = crypt.Hash(text);
Console.WriteLine("MD5: " + md5);

That takes the input it gets in the terminal, puts it in the Hash function and then writes the result (the MD5 hash) to the console. Pretty simple stuff. Now we’re gonna do this with SHA.

C# supports four different types of SHA. SHA1, SHA256, SHA384, and finally SHA512. Here is the entire code for converting text to SHA1.

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
namespace SHA1
{
class MainClass
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.Write("Enter your string: ");
string text = Console.ReadLine();
Hasher crypt = new Hasher();
string sha1 = crypt.Hash(text);
Console.WriteLine("SHA1: " + sha1);
}
}
class Hasher
{
public string Hash(string originalString)
{
Byte[] originalBytes;
Byte[] hashedBytes;
System.Security.Cryptography.SHA1 sha1;
sha1 = new SHA1CryptoServiceProvider();
originalBytes = ASCIIEncoding.Default.GetBytes(originalString);
hashedBytes = sha1.ComputeHash(originalBytes);
return BitConverter.ToString(hashedBytes);
}
}
}

As you might have noticed it was largely a copy and paste of our MD5 hasher. The above script can also be modified to create different types of SHA hashes like those previously mentioned. Really, you can just switch out SHA1 with the other kind of SHA hash you want.  For instance instead of System.Security.Cryptography.SHA1 sha1; you could put System.Security.Cryptography.SHA256 sha256; And then change a few other instances.

I sorta wish C# provided an easy(er) way to convert hashes on the fly but to my knowledge it does not. You can stick these in your application and use them to give you the functionality C# doesn’t give us on its own. By the way, if you get any errors with the stuff I posted, all of them should be easily fixed. Let me know of my errors so I can fix them!

Good luck!

http://tippu.blog.co.in/2009/03/09/wpf-placing-your-wpf-application-on-the-system-tray/

First, I just learned that the 3GS is now jailbreakable with publically accessable tools for both Windows and Mac. I don’t have one, but this is great news. The iPhone Dev-Team Blog also has a post regarding the release of their own version of the jailbreak. There’s more to it than this but if you wanna know more: Google.

Second, I was wondering how you could put your Windows Presentaiton Foundation C# Application in the system tray. I found a good tutorail (second down link at the top) but it had some places where it needed fixing (or at least one).

C# had a problem with the Window_Closing event. First “Window” needs to be the name of your window. Mine was “Tray” so it would be “Tray_Closing”. Next, in your xaml file (in my case, “Tray.xaml”) you need to add this to the end of your opening <Window> tag: Closing="Tray_Closing" again, you need to change “Tray” accordingly. So it might end up looking like this:

<Window x:Class="myApp.Tray"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="Tray" Height="300" Width="300" Name="winTray"
Closing="Tray_Closing">

For any of you guys that wanna do this, it’s here. Hope I could help somebody!

• Support for HTML5 <video> and <audio> tags
• Private Browsing Mode
• New TraceMonkey JavaScript engine
• You can now share your location with others using Location Aware Browsing
• Faster content rendering
• New Web Tech like downloadable fonts, CSS media, and more!

And that is only just a small taste of what Firefox 3.5 can do! Check out the 3.5 release notes if you want more detailed information on the update.

Installing the update is very easy. In Windows select: Help, then Check for Updates. You will not loose any bookmarks. You might loose some of your Add-Ons though. Not all Add-Ons have yet been able to update for the latest Firefox release.

However there are quite a few smaller things that make OS 3.0 more visually appealing. For instance, when the screen dims just before it automatically locks, it will fade instead of just plain dimming. It’s abnormally hard to explain, though. In my opinion that is one of the things Apple does very well. Making the smaller things count almost as much as the more major features.

By the way, I’ve also jailbroken my iPod Touch 2G running on OS 3.0 using redsn0w 0.7. Unfortunately, I’m coming across a problem where my root (/) partition is almost completely used. Even though I only installed one or two apps in Cydia. Might be something wrong with either 3.0 or redsn0w.

I still think that I shoudn’t have to pay for a firmware upgrade, but it seems this update lives up to its $9.95 price tag. What do you think about Apple’s latest firmware update for the iPhone?