nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Help with BeginPersistentConnection Method

System

Hi All,

I'd like to leverage the BeginPersistentConnection method however, I just can't seem to get my head around how it works on an aspx page. Can someone please post some working code and short description of the concepts?

Thanks in advance, I really appreciate it!

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

msnider

The concept of BeginPersistentConnection is to allow longer running client apps to access the MediaBin web service in a stateful manner. By design, the web service is meant to be stateless which means that every call to the web service translates to:

1.) Login to MediaBin server
2.) Do work
3.) Logoff from MediaBin server

This behavior is beneficial to client apps that are designed to retrieve a snapshot of data within MediaBin by "getting in and getting out". However, if the client app is designed to be more like a native, interactive app this can pose a problem...especially with overrunning the concurrent user license.

Retreiving asset previews is especially prone to this type of problem since you will typically get the list of assets and then iterate over that list to retrieve the previews....which will potentially increase the number of concurrent logged in users depending on the time required to access each individual preview in MediaBin.

However, if you call BeginPersistentConnection as the the very first web service request then each subsequent request will reuse the same MediaBin connection and thus x requests will translate to only 1 MediaBin connection. The connection is managed by the web service and it will logoff that user after a specifed period of inactivity (configurable in the web.config). If after logging off a new request by that same user comes in, then the web service will once again persist that connection until it becomes inactive.

The other thing to note about BeginPersistentConnection is that it only works for the user that makes the request. Any other users accessing the web service will not have their connections persisted.

If you do want all user connections persisted, you can set in the web.config file. If you do set it globally, then there is no need to add BeginPersistentConnection within your code.

Hope this helps,
Mark

Migrateduser

Hi Mark,

You're the best! Thanks for such a detailed description. I have a few questions.

1. How does the licensing work for that? Each individual that connects with "PersisetedConnection" will count as one tick a piece?

2. You mentioned as an example, the asset previews. How does the licensing work w/o a persisted connection? Does each preview count as a connection? I have a class (aspx) level variable to store the MediaBinServer class, doesn't that just reuse that same connection?

3. I simply add that key into my web.config and all is done? I don't have to write any more code?

4. BTW-HotFolders rock!

Thanks!

Migrateduser

Okay based on this thread, I have added two values to the web.config. Is this correct? Also, what is the unit of measure for the PersistentTimeout? Based on the example above, is it 30 milliseconds, minutes, days?

Thanks!

Migrateduser

Ohh nice, I guess I can't put my code in the window as it is a vulnerability. Here is the code from the last post.

add key="PersistConnection" value="true"
add key="PersistentTimeout" value="30"

msnider

Ok, to answer your questions from two posts ago:

1.) Since the persisted connection is based on a hash of the domain\username of the user, each "unique" named user will only login once regardless of the number of web service requests.

2.) Your class variable that stores the MediaBinServer object is an object to the web service alone. The MediaBinServer object is a proxy object and therefore client side only....the MediaBin logins are web service side only and are never manipulated directly from the client side. Notice that the web service never exposes a true logon\logoff mechanism for MediaBin...the user credentials that you specify for the MediaBinServer object are for IIS authentication just like you would specify for any other web based application. MediaBin authentication occurs behind the scenes using IIS impersonation and it is at this point that the connection to MediaBin is created and persisted on the web services side...never exposed to the client side ( i.e. to your instance of the MediaBinServer object). So from your perspective you still want to keep your class variable to store the MediaBinServer object.

3.) Yes, you can just change the web.config to persist connections by default. The timeout value is specified in milliseconds and the default is 2 minutes. The timeout is for a period of inactivity and not for allowed time...i.e. every time that a new request comes in it resets the timer and will only expire and disconnect the login if a new request from that same user does not come in during the timeout period.

BTW, since your are writing your application in .NET is there a reason why you are not using the MBPNetModel as a native assembly? Assuming that you don't have a firewall or other network restriction between the MediaBin server and your client app then you could use the MBPNetModel (which is the web service's core dll) as a local reference and then manage the connection to MediaBin yourself. The other plus is that you will have access to the MBPScriptModel session which you can then get the number of assets in a container (which is not currently exposed thru the web service ) Note, that while it is exposed thru the MBPScriptModel interface it's implementation is a bit slow (which should be improved in 4.6)

Mark

Migrateduser

Hi Mark,

Response to #1:
Sorry, I meant to clarify, does each user with a PersistedConnection count against our purchased seats for MediaBin?

Response to #2:
Yes, I am aware, I apprecaite your time to write such an detailed description.

Response to #3:
Ok, thanks for clarifying that. I'll submit an issue to support to clarify in the documentation that the unit of measure is milliseconds.

Response to your BTW:
We embarked on this project to get our feet wet with MBin Web Services and we've learned a ton about the features and limitations. We definitely know that we selected the wrong technology for what we were doing but, it was an excellent storm before our next BIG project.

I cannot find the download for the MBPNetModel anywhere on IWOV's web site. I did notice however, that there is a MBPNetModel.dll installed under the HotFolder section on our production server. Is that the same one?

Is that documentation, the same documentation of the API .pdf file?

Thanks for your time and assistance.

Stacy

msnider

Stacy,

Sorry for the delay in response....its been a busy week.

Yes, a persisted connection is just like a user logged into the native client or web client and therefore will count against the purchased seats.

MBPNetModel.dll is the core dll used by the web service which can also be reused as a referenced dll in any other .NET application. Here's an excerpt from the web service's readme file:

------------------------------------------------------------------
Using the Web service as a native .NET object:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You can use the MediaBin Web services assembly as a native C# assembly. In doing so, you can use most of the web methods
as native methods within your own .NET application. This is also useful if you wish to create your own web service that
wraps MediaBin web service functionality without having the overhead of creating a web service within a web service.

To do so, you will need to reference the MBPNetModel assembly (located in the Bin directory of the web service).

In addition, you will need to redistribute the following files located in inetpub\wwwroot\MediaBinWebService\bin:
MBPNetModel.dll
Interop.MBPSCRIPTMODEL2Lib.dll
Interop.MBUTILSLib.dll

and located in Program Files\Common Files\Interwoven, Inc\MediaBin Models:
Client API 2.dll
jsTools4.dll
MBModel4.dll
MBPScriptModel2.dll
MBUtils
ActiveFile.dll
( the last three DLLs must be registered with regsvr32 )

Mark

Migrateduser

Okay, I'm taking a shot at MBPNetModel NameSpace via a C#/asp.net web application. I have added it as a reference and I now have 3 files under the Bin folder.

I am trying to connect to the server via MBPNetModel.MediaBinServer class with the 5 parameters in the constructor (server, domain, user, password, port). After making an instance of the class, I call the .TestMediaBinConnection() method but, I can't seem to connect.

Can someone please post sample code or maybe tell me what I am doing wrong?

Thanks!

CrossTabSamplePageBreak.rptdesign

msnider

What type of error are you getting? Your code should look something like:

mMediaBinServer = new MediaBinServer( mServerName, mServerPort, mDomain, mUsername, mPassword );

string strResult = mMediaBinServer.TestMediaBinConnection();

//To persist the connection, set OkToLogoff to false
mMediaBinServer.OkToLogoff = false;

Mark

Migrateduser

fyi - I'm not using a using directive to include the namespace at the top of my page.

MBPNetModel.MediaBinServer mediaBinServer = new MBPNetModel.MediaBinServer(serverString, portNumber, domainString, userIDString, passwordString);

try
{
mediaBinServer.TestMediaBinConnection(); // Try to open the connection
return mediaBinServer.MediaBinSession.IsLoggedOn;
}
catch (MBPNetModel.MBObjects.MBException mbexception)
{
MessageBoxDisplay.Show("A connection could not be established to MediaBin. Error: " + mbexception.Message, MessageBoxDisplayType.Error);
return false;
}

Error: MBException: The session object has not been initialized.

Migrateduser

OMG, okay I found that I had a typo in my user credentials. I feel so dumb.

However, I have another question. The string returned from TestMediaBinConnection has a message but, is there a way to trap for an invalid login? Do I just check for MediaBinServer != null?

msnider

The actual connection to the MediaBin server is not made in the constructor...so checking for MediaBinServer != null will not really help.

The best way is to place a try\catch around MediaBinServer.GetMediaBinServerName()....this should catch invalid login credentials and any other exception that would prevent a simple login to the server. In fact, this is basically what the TestMediaBinConnection does....it just catches the exception and returns the message string.

Mark

Migrateduser

Thank you, I apprecaite it.

Migrateduser

Hi All,

I'm resurrecting this thread from the dead. We've been working on a web site utilizing the mbpnetmodel.dll directly instead of a web service. However, I'm not clear on what security model to use or maybe I should say how to use it.

When I've built web services myself, we commonly use IIS Windows Authentication and I have established roles per the Roles and RoleManager classes in .NET. Then, we map our AD to those roles and allow our application administrators to manage the permissions themselves.

However, with MBPNetModel.dll, I'm not sure what to do. How do I persist someone's credentials from the client browser to IIS and into MBin?

Thanks in advance.

msnider

Hi Stacy,

I'm not sure what is being asked. If you are talking about how to persist the MediaBin connection between various MBPNetModel calls, then you just turn off automatic logoff after you create the MBPNetModel.MediaBinServer object


mMediaBinServer = new MediaBinServer( mConnection.mServerName, mConnection.mServerPort, mConnection.mDomain, mConnection.mUsername, mPassword );

mMediaBinServer.OkToLogoff = false;

If you are talking about how to persist the actual MBPNetModel.MediaBinServer between calls to your web service, then after you do the above, you just store the object as a application variable


Application.Add( strKeyName, mMediaBinServer);

and then reference that each time a request is made


mMediaBinServer = (MBPNetModel.MediaBinServer) this.Application[ strKeyName ];

Hope this helps,
Mark

MarkMoynahan

Hi All,

Hope you can help,

I'm trying to use the MBPNetModel in my aspx page and got it working locally. I copied the nine related dll's to a directory on my server and was able to run regsvr32 on both ActiveFile.dll and MBPScriptModel2.dll. But when I try to run it on MBUtils.dll I get the error "the specified module could not be found". This file is in the same directory as the others and I'm sure I'm typing the name correctly. For deployment purposes, can I have all these dll's together in one folder or do they need to be in specific locations?

Thanks,
Mark