Mike Snows Silverlight Blog

Game Programming with Silverlight 2.0

Tip of the Day #12 - Full Implementation of a Silverlight Policy Server.

In Silverlight Beta 1 you could only use sockets to connect to the same host the Silverlight application was served up from. In Beta 2 a change was made to allow you to connect to any server. However, before the Silverlight application can connect to the server it must first successfully connect to a policy server on that machine in order to proceed with the connection.

Below I will take you through every step you need to create and run your own policy server.

To start, create a new C# console application.  Then, create a new XML file called “clientaccesspolicy.xml” and add it to your project. This is the file your Policy Server will send to a client giving it permission to proceed with the connection.

The contents of the “clientaccesspolicy.xml” are as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<access-policy>
  <cross-domain-access>
    <policy>
      <allow-from>
        <domain uri="*"/>
      </allow-from>
      <grant-to>
        <socket-resource port="4502-4534" protocol="tcp"/>
      </grant-to>
    </policy>
  </cross-domain-access>
</access-policy>

Note that with Silverlight, sockets are limited to ports #4502-4534.  Also, the policy server that sends this policy file to the connecting client must be run on port 943.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;
 
namespace PolicyServer
{
    // Encapsulate and manage state for a single connection from a client
    class PolicyConnection
    {
        private Socket _connection;
        private byte[] _buffer; // buffer to receive the request from the client       
        private int _received;
        private byte[] _policy; // the policy to return to the client
 
        // the request that we're expecting from the client
        private static string _policyRequestString = "<policy-file-request/>";
 
        public PolicyConnection(Socket client, byte[] policy)
        {
            _connection = client;
            _policy = policy;
 
            _buffer = new byte[_policyRequestString.Length];
            _received = 0;
 
            try
            {
                // receive the request from the client
                _connection.BeginReceive(_buffer, 0, _policyRequestString.Length, SocketFlags.None,
                    new AsyncCallback(OnReceive), null);
            }
            catch (SocketException)
            {
                _connection.Close();
            }
        }
 
        // Called when we receive data from the client
        private void OnReceive(IAsyncResult res)
        {
            try
            {
                _received += _connection.EndReceive(res);
 
                // if we haven't gotten enough for a full request yet, receive again
                if (_received < _policyRequestString.Length)
                {
                    _connection.BeginReceive(_buffer, _received, _policyRequestString.Length - _received,
                        SocketFlags.None, new AsyncCallback(OnReceive), null);
                    return;
                }
 
                // make sure the request is valid
                string request = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(_buffer, 0, _received);
                if (StringComparer.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase.Compare(request, _policyRequestString) != 0)
                {
                    _connection.Close();
                    return;
                }
 
                // send the policy
                Console.Write("Sending policy...\n");
                _connection.BeginSend(_policy, 0, _policy.Length, SocketFlags.None,
                    new AsyncCallback(OnSend), null);
            }
            catch (SocketException)
            {
                _connection.Close();
            }
        }
 
        // called after sending the policy to the client; close the connection.
        public void OnSend(IAsyncResult res)
        {
            try
            {
                _connection.EndSend(res);
            }
            finally
            {
                _connection.Close();
            }
        }
    }
 
    // Listens for connections on port 943 and dispatches requests to a PolicyConnection
    class PolicyServer
    {
        private Socket _listener;
        private byte[] _policy;
 
        // pass in the path of an XML file containing the socket policy
        public PolicyServer(string policyFile)
        {
 
            // Load the policy file
            FileStream policyStream = new FileStream(policyFile, FileMode.Open);
 
            _policy = new byte[policyStream.Length];
            policyStream.Read(_policy, 0, _policy.Length);
            policyStream.Close();
 
 
            // Create the Listening Socket
            _listener = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream,
                ProtocolType.Tcp);
 
            _listener.SetSocketOption(SocketOptionLevel.Tcp, (SocketOptionName)
                SocketOptionName.NoDelay, 0);
 
            _listener.Bind(new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, 943));
            _listener.Listen(10);
 
            _listener.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(OnConnection), null);
        }
 
        // Called when we receive a connection from a client
        public void OnConnection(IAsyncResult res)
        {
            Socket client = null;
 
            try
            {
                client = _listener.EndAccept(res);
            }
            catch (SocketException)
            {
                return;
            }
 
            // handle this policy request with a PolicyConnection
            PolicyConnection pc = new PolicyConnection(client, _policy);
 
            // look for more connections
            _listener.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(OnConnection), null);
        }
 
        public void Close()
        {
            _listener.Close();
        }
    }
 
    public class Program
    {
        static void Main()
        {
            Console.Write("Starting...\n");
            PolicyServer ps =
                new PolicyServer(@"<path to your file>\clientaccesspolicy.xml");
            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(System.Threading.Timeout.Infinite);
        }
    }
}

The code for the policy server itself is as follows:You will need to change where it says "<path to your file>\clientaccesspolicy.xml" to be the actual path to where you saved this file on your server.

Thank you,
--Mike Snow

 Subscribe in a reader

Comments

Microsoft Weblogs said:

In Silverlight Beta 1 you could only use sockets to connect to the same host the Silverlight application

# June 26, 2008 7:15 PM

Community Blogs said:

Jaime Rodriguez on DeepZoom, Pete Brown on on Publish/Subscribe pattern in SL, Shawn Wildermuth on XAML

# June 27, 2008 6:12 PM

Silverlight news for June 30, 2008 said:

Pingback from  Silverlight news for June 30, 2008

# June 30, 2008 3:41 AM

chrisaswain said:

This saved me a lot of trouble.  Thanks!

# July 1, 2008 11:14 AM