Using PHP webservice in winforms application – Plesk

Currently I’m storing my C# mysql connection informations inside the class file itself, which doesn’t seem that smart, since end users could simply use a reflector like NET Reflector to debug the source code in case it’s not obfruscated.

Now a user on stackoverflow recommendet to create a web service which will manipulate the database.The software that the end-user would use then simply authenticates itself with the web service using the user’s credentials and then uses that to access resources.

Now I have the following problem, My server is running on linux ubuntu and already stores a website which was created using plesk.

I know that I could use http://www.mono-project.com/ to host a webservice on linux. But I’ve never done that since I’ve always used PHP to do such things and I’ve got kinda confused on how to upload a c# web-service to the installed mono version on the ssh server.

Could I use something like the following PHP code as a C# web service in my winforms application?

PHP code:

<?php
    class webService extends database
    {
        // Web service constructor
        public function __construct($username, $password, $uniqueId, $versionId)
        {
            $this->username = $username;
            $this->password = $password;
            $this->salt = 'xxx';
            $this->hash = 'xxx';
            $this->uniqueId = $uniqueid;
            $this->versionId = $versionId;
        }

        // Web service functions to check database values

        // Web service user account check function
        private function userCheck()
        {
            $this->connect();
            $userCheck = $this->execute_query("SELECT username, password FROM Users WHERE username = '" . $this->username . "' AND password = '" . $this->hash . "'");

            if($userCheck && mysqli_num_rows($userCheck) > 0)
            {
                return 'true';
            }
            else
            {
                return 'false';
            }
        }

        // Web service unique id check function
        private function uniqueCheck()
        {
            $this->connect();
            $uniqueCheck = $this->execute_query("SELECT username, uniqueid FROM Users WHERE username = '" . $this->username . "' AND uniqueid = '" . $this->uniqueId . "'");

            if($uniqueCheck && mysqli_num_rows($uniqueCheck) > 0)
            {
                return 'true';
            }
            else
            {
                return 'false';
            }
        }

        // Web service first run check function
        private function firstRunCheck()
        {
            $this->connect();
            $firstRunCheck = $this->execute_query("SELECT username, firstrun FROM Users WHERE username = '" . $this->username . "' AND firstrun = '0'");

            if($firstRunCheck && mysqli_num_rows($firstRunCheck) > 0)
            {
                return 'true';
            }
            else
            {
                return 'false';
            }
        }

        // Web service user disabled check function
        private function disabledUserCheck()
        {
            $this->connect();
            $disabledUserCheck = $this->execute_query("SELECT disabled FROM Users WHERE username = '" . $this->username . "' AND disabled = '1'");

            if($disabledUserCheck && mysqli_num_rows($disabledUserCheck) > 0)
            {
                return 'true';
            }
            else
            {
                return 'false';
            }
        }

        // Web service update required check function
        private function updateRequiredCheck()
        {
            $this->connect();
            $updateRequiredCheck = $this->execute_query("SELECT requiredupdate FROM requiredupdate WHERE version = '" . $this->versionId . "' AND requiredupdate = 1");

            if($updateRequiredCheck && mysqli_num_rows($updateRequiredCheck) > 0)
            {
                return 'true';
            }
            else
            {
                return 'false';
            }
        }

        // Web service premium check function
        private function userPremiumCheck()
        {
            $this->connect();
            $userPremiumCheck = $this->execute_query("SELECT premium FROM Users WHERE username = '" . $this->username . "' AND premium = 1");

            if($userPremiumCheck && mysqli_num_rows($userPremiumCheck) > 0)
            {
                return 'true';
            }
            else
            {
                return 'false';
            }
        }

        // Web service functions to update database values

        // Web service update first run parameters function
        private function firstRunUpdate()
        {
            $firstRunCheck = $this->firstRunCheck();

            if($firstRunCheck == 'true')
            {
                $this->connect();
                $this->execute_query("UPDATE Users SET uniqueid = '" . $this->uniqueId . "', firstrun = '1' WHERE username = '" . $this->username . "'");

                return 'true';
            }
            else
            {   
                return 'false';
            }
        }

        function to_xml(SimpleXMLElement $object, array $data)
        {   
            foreach ($data as $key => $value) {
                if (is_array($value)) {
                    $new_object = $object->addChild($key);
                    to_xml($new_object, $value);
                } else {   
                    $object->addChild($key, $value);
                }   
            }   
        }   

        // Web service handler function
        public function webService()
        {
            $userCheck = $this->userCheck();

            if($userCheck == 'true')
            {
                $userArray = array (
                    'username' => $this->username,
                    'authentificated' => $this->userCheck(),
                    'firstRun' => $this->firstRunCheck(),
                    'firstRunUpdated' => $this->firstRunUpdate(),
                    'uniqueIdCheck' => $this->uniqueCheck(),
                    'Premium' => $this->userPremiumCheck(),
                    'Disabled' => $this->disabledUserCheck(),
                    'updateRequired' => $this->updateRequiredCheck()
                );
            }
            else
            {
                $userArray = array (
                    'username' => $this->username,
                    'userCheck' => $this->userCheck()
                );
            }

            echo str_replace("/", "/", json_encode($userArray, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT));
        }
    }
?>

Or how is a PHP Web-Service created which could get used in my application?

The current response from the PHP script would look like the following:

{ "username": "dane", "authentificated": "true", "firstRun": "false", "firstRunUpdated": "false", "uniqueIdCheck": "true", "Premium": "true", "Disabled": "false", "updateRequired": "false" }