How to configure https for Apache2.2 and consume PHP web services over https

Step 1.

Create a Certificate Authority, CA.

openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 4096
openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -key ca.key -out ca.crt

Now we have a certificate authority certificate to sign the certificate for the server.

Step 2.

Generate a key for the server.

openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 4096

Generate a certificate signing request

openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

Optional step : remove the passphrase from the key

Rename server.key to server.key.bac.

openssl rsa -in server.key.bac -out server.key

Step3.

Sign the generated key with certificate authority

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 01 -out server.crt

Now we have the necessary keys and certificates to configure Apache2.2 server to enable https

Step4.

copy the generated keys, certificates to a directory named keys under the conf directory.

Uncomment ssl module and ssl configuration file in httpd.conf.

LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so

Include conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf

Step 5.

configure https in httpd-ssl.conf file located in conf/extra directory. Use the default settings and specify the following Files to match your local settings.

SLCertificateFile "F:/Apache2.2/conf/keys/server.crt"

SSLCertificateKeyFile "F:/Apache2.2/conf/keys/server.key"

SSLCACertificateFile "F:/Apache2.2/conf/keys/ca.crt"

#SSLVerifyClient require

SSLVerifyDepth 1

SSLVerifyClient and SSLVerifyDepth options would only be required, if you want the client to authenticate to the server using a certificate and a passphrase.

Now you have successfully configured https for your server.

When connecting to the server, you can obtain the servers certificate by using openssl.

openssl s_client –connect localhost:443 > scert.pem

Now open the scert.pem and remove the unnecessary. Only the content within the -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- and -----END CERTIFICATE----- needed for the certificate. You certificate would look like

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

-----END CRETIFICATE-----

Step 6.

Now we can connect to a service deployed in Apache server using https and consume it.

$client = new WSClient(array(“to”=>”https://localhost/webservices/service1.php”,

                                                “CACert”=>”cert.pem”));

$response = $client->request($input);

Much more detailed discussion on implementing https alone with Axis2/C is available here.

WSF/C++ Performance Comparison

We carried out a simple performance comparison between WSF/C++ , WSF/C against a set of other web services products. The results are published here.

WSO2 Carbon Based Admin Console for Axis2/C WSF/C and WSF/C++

http://wso2.org/projects/wsf/cppWith the availability of WSO2 WSF Admin, now users can manage their C and C++ Web Services Deployed in Axis2/C, WSF/C or WSF/C++ using the GUI interface of Carbon. At present, WSF Admin is at first milestone and supports following set of features.

Service Listing and Module Listing

Security Configuration

Policy Editing

Service Statistics

Following are some of the screen shots of New WSF Admin Console with WSF/C++.

Service Listing 

Engage Statistics Module to a service using the admin console and view the service usage statistics.

Configure Security

View and Edit Service Policies

There are lots of other functionality in-addition to the once I have shown above.  WSF Admin is a set set of web services and modules implemented using WSO2 Web Services Framework, plus a Customized Carbon Instance. The Admin Console works by using web services interactions to the WSF/C Back End where the C Admin Services deployed. WSF Admin is also a demonstration of not only the interoperability of WSO2 products ( Between java based Carbon Platform and C/C++ based WSF Products ) but also the flexibility of WSO2 Carbon Platform. 

WSF Admin milestone 1 release does not have the persistence and hence the configuration changes you make will not be preserved once you shutdown your server. The next release of WSF Admin will be having the persistence capability.

Making the Skeleton Dance

This is a very interesting marketing strategy.  A guy walks into an into an interview and  highlights his negatives.

As I look over my copy of Thompson's application, I mentally reduce his chances from minuscule to nonexistent. I glance at my watch. I've got an early flight. I wonder how long it will take my compatriots to blow poor Thompson off.
"So why should we hire you, Mr. Thompson?" the area manager asks, starting with the question she usually finishes with.
Thompson smiles.
"I'm 53 years old," he says without hesitation. "I'm not pretty. I've been unemployed for almost five months—ever since my last company went belly-up. I've got no experience in your industry. If you take a look at my application you'll see that there's a checkmark next to the yes on that question about whether or not I've ever been convicted of a felony. I've applied for any number of other jobs and no one else will hire me." He looks at us each in turn while he's slowly ticking off these points on his fingers, as confidently as if he were explaining his Harvard MBA, his Olympic gold medals and his seven years as CEO of General Motors. "So let me tell you why I'm the best possible candidate you're ever going to find for this position."
And that's exactly what he proceeds to do—demonstrating the poise and assurance and experience he'd gained in those 53 years.
"If you hire me, I can't afford not to succeed!" he tells us with passion and conviction. "I don't have the option of being able to move on to greener pastures—or even brown pastures—when the job gets too grueling. I'm 100 percent committed. As locked into this position as I was locked into that jail cell 35 years ago. And if you'll notice that's where I earned the most of the credits for my college degree. I never wanted a Master's, so I've made sure I've never had to go back. But what I learned in that place—the formal and the informal training—has a lot to do with why I've been so successful at every job I've had since then."

Read the full article here.

http://www.evancarmichael.com/Sales/372/Making-the-Skeleton-Dance-Bragging-about-the-Negatives.html

How to write a custom message receiver for WSF/CPP

When you have to go beyond the supported interface of a ServiceSkeleton when implementing a service, you can use a custom message receiver to achieve that functionality.  For example, recently we encountered such scenario where the unparsed soap enveloped body has to be accessed for some custom logic. But when implementing a service using ServiceSkeleton interface, you would always ended up getting the first child of the soap body as an argument.

In that kind of a situation, the best option would be to implement a custom message receiver. WSF/CPP now provides a very convenient API for implementing a message receiver. 

For implementing a custom message receiver, WSF/CPP provides a class named MessageReceiver. What a user has to do is to extend from this and implement the abstract method invokeBusinessLogicSync which will receive inflow message context and outflow message context as arguments. Then you have the full control over the processing of the message received by the message receiver.

Next add the macro WSF_MESSAGE_RECEIVER_INIT and pass the message receiver class name as the argument.

Next compile the written code as a shared library and place it in <WSFCPP_REPO>\lib directory. When implementing a service which would be invoked using this custom message receiver, set the name of the shared library as the “messageReceiver” parameter for each operation. For example, if the shared library name is “CustomMsgRecv”

<operation name=”Op1”><messageReceiver class=”CustomMsgRecv”/></operation>

Here is the example message receiver code.

/* CustomMsgRecv.h */

#include <MessageReceiver.h>

class CustomMsgRecv : public wso2wsf::MessageReceiver
{
public:
    WSF_EXTERN bool WSF_CALL 
        invokeBusinessLogicSync(wso2wsf::MessageContext *inMsgCtx, 
                                wso2wsf::MessageContext* outMsgCtx);
    CustomMsgRecv(void);
    ~CustomMsgRecv(void);
};

/** CustomMsgRecv.cpp */

#include "CustomMsgRecv.h"
#include <MessageReceiver.h>

using namespace wso2wsf;

WSF_MESSAGE_RECEIVER_INIT(CustomMsgRecv)

CustomMsgRecv::CustomMsgRecv(void)
{
}

CustomMsgRecv::~CustomMsgRecv(void)
{
}

WSF_EXTERN bool WSF_CALL 
CustomMsgRecv::invokeBusinessLogicSync(wso2wsf::MessageContext *inMsgCtx,
                                       wso2wsf::MessageContext *outMsgCtx)
{
    /** Add Your Logic Here */
}

Better Open Source Enterprise C++ Web Services-webinar

I will be doing a webinar on WSF/C++ on 10th November. If you are looking to incorporate native web services stack in your web services solution, this webinar will be of great value for you to evaluate WSF/C++ and get to know the capabilities and get started and what's more its free. This webinar will be a technical oriented one with covering lots of details on how you can use WSF/C++ framework.

Registration for webinar is now open. Looking forward to seeing lots of you turn-up for the webinar. :)

WSO2 WSF/C++ 2.1.0 Released

We are pleased to announce the release of WSO2 Web Services Framework for C++ 2.1.0 release.  With this 2.1 release comes some very useful usability enhancements in addition to many improvements to the framework.

Now the code generator tool is able to generate visual studio project files for the generated code. In addition, we have released an eclipse plug-in wizard alone with this release, which provides a comprehensive GUI interface to the code generator tool. This will allow the users who are working within eclipse IDE to generate code without having to leave the IDE.

We have done some work to improve the performance of the WSF/C framework within this period of time. In addition, the many shortcomings  in the code generation tool has been addressed from the previous release.New samples were added. Also some platform specific issues have been addressed in this release which allowed WSF/C++ to be complied in both MacOS as well as Solaris without having to do any changes.

You can download the 2.1 release from here.  Also download the Eclipse Codegen Wizard Plugin if your prefer to work in eclipse.

Here is the complete release note.

WSO2 Web Services Framework for C++ (WSO2 WSF/C++) 2.1.0 Released

=================================================================

WSO2 WSF/C++ team is pleased to announce the release of WSO2 WSF/C++ 2.1.0.

You can download this release from: http://wso2.org/downloads/wsf/cpp

WSO2 Web Services Framework for C++ (WSO2 WSF/C++) is a standards compliant, enterprise

grade, open source, C++ library for providing and consuming Web services in C++, based on the popular,

WSO2 WSF/C library.

Project home page:

http://wso2.org/projects/wsf/cpp

-------------

Key Features

=============

1. Client API to consume Web services

      * ServiceClient class with one-way and two-way service invocation support

        for SOAP 1.1, and SOAP 1.2.

      * Options class to facilitate configuring the client for both SOAP and REST options.

2. Service API to provide Web Services

      * ServiceSkeleton class to extend from to implement services.

2. Attachments with MTOM

      * Binary optimized

      * Non-optimized (Base64 binary)

      * Attachment Caching Support

3. WS-Addressing

      * Version 1.0

      * Submission

4. WSPolicy

5. WS-Security

      * Username Token

      * Timestamp Token

      *  Signing

      *  Encryption

      * WS-SecurityPolicy based configuration 

      * Reply detection

      * WS-Trust

      * WS-Secure Conversation  

6. Code generation Tool

      * By providing a wsdl and options, generate client stubs and service skeletons

        in C++ using the code generation tool.

      * A Code generation Eclipse plugin is also available with this release. The code generation tool

has been integrated into an eclipse plugin wizard which allows a user to conveniently

utilise the code generation tool while working within eclipse.

7. SSL enabled transport layer

8. WS-Reliable Messaging

9. Has all the capabilities available from WSF/C library.

--------------------------------

Major Changes Since Last Release

================================

1. Eclipse plugin for code generation tool added.

2. Visual Studio project file generation is added to the code generation tool.

3. Documentation Improved.

4. Many bugs fixed in the code generation tool.

5. Many memory leak fixes.

6. More samples have been added.

7. The Service API has been enhanced to allow users to extend from the generated skeleton classes.

-------------------

Known Issues

-------------------

There could be memory leaks in some scenarios.

-------------------

Reporting Problems

===================

Issues can be reported using the public JIRA available at:

https://wso2.org/jira/browse/WSFCPP

-----------

Contact Us

===========

Mailing Lists

-------------

Please subscribe to our user or developer mailing lists. For details on how

to subscribe please visit: http://wso2.org/mail

Discussion Forums

-----------------

Questions could be raised using the WSF/C++ forum.

http://wso2.org/forum/352

Training

========

WSO2 Inc. offers a variety of professional Training Programs which includes training on WSF/C++.

For additional information please refer to http://wso2.com/training/

Support

========

WSO2 Inc. offers a variety of development and production support programs, ranging from Web-based

support up through normal business hours, to premium 24x7 phone support.

For additional support information please refer to http://wso2.com/services/support/

We welcome your early feedback on this implementation.

Thank you for your interest in WSO2 WSF/C++.

-- WSO2 WSF/C++ Team --