Saturday 24 July 2021

Do Not Be Scared!!!

Main Site And Tools Still Running For Now


By Strictly-Software


Just to let you know that the main site with all the tools such as the:

  • Best JavaScript HTML Encoder & Decoder available, handles double encoding, numeric or entity.
  • Depacking packed code, even if it's been packed multiple times and reformatting it to a readable state.
  • My top WordPress Strictly-AutoTags plugin (Free/Professional), which gives you automated #SEO, deep-linking, and automatic tagging of important words with no 3rd party lookups. No need to check a list of names, if John Smith carries out a wicked crime tonight that is in articles you post automatically then it will find the word and bold it to aid SEO.
  • My top WordPress Strictly-TweetBot plugin, that allows you to tweet to multiple accounts, only if certain words are found in an article OR NOT, using different hash tags made up from either #posttags #categories or #default tags. The professional version has a way of caching the page first before Tweeting so that you are not overwhelmed by any Twitter Rush when you Tweet. Timers can be placed between each Tweet out as well.
  • Lots of free scripts and code that fix holes in frameworks like jQuery.
  • SQL Performance scripts and tuning procedures.
  • Plus lots lots more....
Is still working and you CAN STILL ACCESS IT......

All that has happened is that I can no longer can access the server, due to new security on the site that hosts it. They have added an extra layer of security in which sends an email out to an address I have no access to requesting the code they sent out to be entered on their site to get in. Therefore I cannot get into the servers site, to then use their Java applet to get into the server to add my ever changing IPv4 address to the firewall.

Therefore when you try and go to www.strictly-software.com you will probably see some sort of warning message from your browser like the one shown in the picture below. It will say the site is not secure and hackers maybe trying to steal your data - that is rubbish. 

All that has happened is that due to not being able to renew my SSL certificate, the site is no longer https, no-one is trying to steal your data. I just have not been able to put an SSL on my webserver.

So ignore the message, hit "Advanced", then you should see a "Proceed To Site" link underneath, click that and you can still access the site for now.

Here are two examples, one from Brave/Chrome, the other Opera.

Chrome trying to block access to the site




Opera trying to block access, click the bottom link to get to the site



So no-one is trying to hack you or steal your information, just go to "Advanced" and then click the "Proceed to www.strictly-software.com" link.

All I would suggest is if you are going to buy one of my top WordPress plugins that you do NOT use a PUBLIC WIFI SPOT. 

Do it at home, use a VPN if you can, but do NOT do it at as you are walking down the street being connected and re-connected to various BT public WIFI hotspots

I am sure 99% of them are safe as the users have no technical knowledge to set up their own DNS server and take you somewhere else other than my site, but just to be safe do it at HOME or on a PRIVATE network.

Hope this helps anyone trying to get to the main site.



By Strictly-Software


© 2021 Strictly-Software

Wednesday 21 July 2021

Making A Super Trim Function

Using Regular Expressions To Make a SuperTrim() Function


By Strictly-Software

How many times has there been when you have two bits of text that you have extracted from various websites, or feeds or even databases and tried to compare them but they would not match?

I know I wrote a little example of when two different ASCII space characters are used within SQL the other day and how to check and remove them to make a match but what about all the various ways you can HTML Encode spaces like     and   plus others that make up a CrLF or just a Cr or Lf, a bit like the VbCrLf constant for a carriage return and line feed, either using Environment.NewLine or constants that hold values for \r \n and also maybe a tab \t.

All these are spaces that need removing and with a special function that uses regular expressions they can all easily be removed .

I use this function in MS SQL with a CLR C# UDF as well as Extending C# projects with a new SuperTrim() method like so:

public static string SuperTrim(this string value)
{
    string newval = "";

    // match each type of space from start of input up to a word character that may or may not have spaces in between
    // e.g a sentence like Hello There John and then removes the same space characters to the right to the end of sentence.
    string re = @"(^(?: | | |\s|\t|\r|\n)+?)(\w+[\s\S]+?\w+)((?: | | |\s|\t|\r|\n)+?$)";
    Regex regex = new Regex(re, RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

    newval = regex.Replace(value, ""); // replace each space HTML char with nothing

    return newval;
}


It is pretty easy enough to create yourself a test page in HTML using JavaScript with a couple of textarea input boxes for the test value containing encoded spaces a button to run a JS function that runs the regex as seen in the C# example and then outputs the result in another box. 

The regular expression is interchangeable between languages, that's what I love about Regular Expressions, they can be tested and played about with on a simple HTML page with JavaScript and then one the expression works you can easily move it into whatever language you are working in e.g C# or PHP.

For example this encoded text:

      Rob Reid       

Then after running the regular expression or string newValue = EncodedValue.SuperTrim() method in C# or JavaScript you should get this value with no encoded characters left.
Rob Reid

I find extending whatever language I am writing in to include a SuperTrim() function very handy. If you were handling URL's you might want to remove %20 and the + sign, you can always add more or less into the expression depending on your needs of course like values for nulls or \v for vertical tabs depending on the content you are handling.


By Strictly-Software

© 2021 Strictly-Software