Is System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.Send synchronous? - smtpclient

Considering that SmtpClient has a SendAsync method which I'm not using, is it safe therefore to assume the StmpClient.Send is synchronous? I'm using it to send an email with temporary file attachment and want to know whether I can delete the temporary attachment immediately afterwards.
Thanks, Rob.

From the msdn documentation: "Sends an e-mail message to an SMTP server for delivery. These methods block while the message is being transmitted.".
So yes it's synchronous.

Well, the "send" to the smtp server is synchronous, but if you were trying to make sure the message got to its intended destination, you're out of luck. SmtpClient will wash its hands of the operation as soon as the Smtp server acknowledges receipt.

Yes it's synchronous.

Related

sending the verification code to the SMS and not to the application

is it possible to define how the verification code will be sent when calling the LoginUserIfNeeded method? I need to send it via SMS and not to the application.
Telegram servers decide by themselves through which method to send the code initially.
However if the user did not receive the code (eventually after a given timeout), he can request the code to be sent through an alternative method:
In WTelegramClient, this is done by returning an empty string for "verification_code" (typically, only on the first try)
You should probably first check through which medium Telegram sent the code:
The client.OnUpdate event receives a Auth_SentCode object specifying details (type) about the transmitted verification code. Then you can decide to reply the empty string only if it was transmitted through a medium you don't have access to.
You can check via the Auth_SentCode.next_type field which method will be used to send the code on the next try. (and you can possibly reply an empty verification_code again to try yet another method)
Additionally, on the call to LoginUserIfNeeded you can pass a CodeSettings instance which offer some limited options about the enabled methods for sending of the code.

What is the correct way to handle multiple levels of network requests?

I have a service which accepts HTTP requests from a customer site. The service then sends an HTTP request to a transactional email provider with information provided in the initial request to the service. The workflow looks like this:
CustomerSite ⟷ EmailService ⟷ TransactionEmailProvider
I can think of two possibilities for handling requests so that errors from the TransactionalEmailProvider can be reported to the CustomerSite.
The EmailService immediately sends an asynchronous request to
TransactionalEmailProvider when it receives a request from a
CustomerSite. The EmailService immediately responds to the
CustomerSite with a success code if the request was properly
formed. If a failure happened when sending a request to the
TransactionalEmailProvider, the EmailService sends a failure
notification using a POST request back to the EmailService using a
webhook implementation.
The EmailService sends a request to the TransactionalEmailProvider, and awaits a response before responding to the CustomerSite request with either a success or a failure.
Right now I'm implementing the first version because I don't want the responsiveness of the EmailService to be dependent on the responsiveness of the TransactionalEmailProvider.
Is this a reasonable way to process HTTP requests that are dependent upon a second level of HTTP requests? Are there situations in which one would be preferred over the other?
Is this a reasonable way to process HTTP requests that are dependent upon a second level of HTTP requests? Are there situations in which one would be preferred over the other?
It really depends on the system requirements, it depends on how you want to behave in case of failure of some of its components or under varying workload.
If you want your system to be reactive or scalable you should use asynchronous requests whenever possible. For this your system should be message driven. You could read more about reactive system here. This seems like your first option.
If you want a simpler system then use synchronous/blocking requests, like your option no. 2

How to ensure that a Text Message was sent via JMS succesfull?

i have wrote a Text Message Sender Program via JMS with C++ following.
tibems_status status = TIBEMS_OK;
status = tibemsMsgProducer_SendToDestination(
m_tProducer,
m_tDestination,
m_tMsg );
Suppose status == 0, this means only that Function has worked succesfull. It doesn't mean that my Text Message was sent succesfull
How can I ensure that my Message was sent succesfull? Should I get a ID or Acknowledge from JMS Queue back?
It depends on the Message Delivery Mode.
When a PERSISTENT message is sent, the tibemsMsgProducer_SendToDestination call will wait for the EMS server to reply with a confirmation.
When a NON_PERSISTENT message is sent, the tibemsMsgProducer_SendToDestination call may or may not wait for a confirmation depending on if authorization is enabled and the npsend_check_mode setting. See the EMS docs (linked above) for specific details.
Lastly, when a RELIABLE_DELIVERY message is sent, the tibemsMsgProducer_SendToDestination call does not wait for a confirmation and will only fail if the connection to the EMS server is lost.
However, even in the situations where a confirmation is sent, this is only confirmation that the EMS server has received the message. It does not confirm that the message was received and processed by the message consumer. EMS Monitoring Messages can be used to determine if the message was acknowledged by the consumer.
The message monitoring topics are in the form $sys.monitor.<D>.<E>.<destination>, where <D> matches Q|q|T|t, <E> matches s|r|a|p|\* and <destination> is the name of the destination. For instance to monitor for message acknowledgment for the queue named beterman, your program would subscribe to $sys.monitor.q.a.beterman (or $sys.monitor.Q.a.beterman if you want a copy of the message that was acknowledged).
The monitoring messages contain many properties, including the msg_id, source_name and target_name. You can use that information to correlate it back to the message you sent.
Otherwise, the simpler option is to use a tibemsMsgRequestor instead of a tibemsMsgProducer. tibemsMsgRequestor_Request will send the message and wait for a reply from the recipient. In this case you are best to use RELIABLE_DELIVERY and NO_ACKNOWLEDGE to remove all the confirmation and acknowledgement messages between the producer and the EMS server and the EMS server and the consumer.
However, if you do go down the tibemsMsgRequestor route, then you may also want to consider simply using a HTTP request instead, with a load balancer in place of the EMS server. Architecturally there isn't much difference between the two options (EMS uses persistent TCP connections, HTTP doesn't)
Producer -> EMS Server -> ConsumerA
-> ConsumerB
Client -> Load Balancer -> ServerA
-> ServerB
But with HTTP you have clear semantics for each of the methods. GET is safe (does not change state), PUT and DELETE are idempotent (multiple identical requests should have the same effect as a single request), and POST is non-idempotent (it causes a change in server state each time it is performed), etc. You also have well defined status codes. If you're using tibemsMsgRequestor you'll need to create bespoke semantics and response status, which will require extra effort to create, maintain and to train the other developers in your team on.
Also, it far easier to find developers with HTTP skills than EMS skills and it's far easier to find information HTTP that EMS, so the tibemsMsgRequestor option will make recruiting more difficult and problem solving issues more difficult.
Because of this HTTP is a better option IMO, for request-reply or for when you want to ensure that that the message sent was processed successfully.

RESTful way to trigger server-side events

I have a situation where I need my API to have a call for triggering a service-side event, no information (besides authentication) is needed from the client, and nothing needs to be returned by the server. Since this doesn't fit well into the standard CRUD/Resource interaction, should I take this as an indicator that I'm doing something wrong, or is there a RESTful design pattern to deal with these conditions?
Your client can just:
POST /trigger
To which the server would respond with a 202 Accepted.
That way your request can still contain the appropriate authentication headers, and the API can be extended in the future if you need the client to supply an entity, or need to return a response with information about how to query the event status.
There's nothing "non-RESTful" about what you're trying to do here; REST principles don't have to correlate to CRUD operations on resources.
The spec for 202 says:
The entity returned with this response SHOULD include an indication of
the request's current status and either a pointer to a status monitor
or some estimate of when the user can expect the request to be
fulfilled.
You aren't obliged to send anything in the response, given the "SHOULD" in the definition.
REST defines the nature of the communication between the client and server. In this case, I think the issues is there is no information to transfer.
Is there any reason the client needs to initiate this at all? I'd say your server-side event should be entirely self-contained within the server. Perhaps kick it off periodically with a cron call?

Web Services design

Company A has async pooling based webservice for notifications. Company B checks for notifications. Every time when it reads new notifications A deletes them from the system. Thus subsequent read requests return only new notifications. There is also requirement for the client B to interrupt the connection if there is no response within 30 sec.
This causes one potential problem: Due to unexpected slowness it is possible for A get the request deleted a notification and send the response back while B is already interrupted the connection. Under this scenario notification gets lost. Now one can argue that the core problem lies within operation realm (the HTTP response must be delivered withing 20 sec ) still on practice it is not always feasible.
How to design B (the client) to avoid this problem?
One way I can see is to do not delete the notifications by A and make B be aware of its state, so that it knows starting from what ID it needs to process notifications, but that presumes that ID will be sequential. Which is controlled by A. Even if B defines its own sequence A still has to be altered to return it back.
Are there any other approaches?
Thanks!
Web services in general are unreliable enough that it's rarely a good idea to make a "read" request serve double-duty as a "delete" request, especially without the client's knowledge. There is just too much risk of a connection dropping or timing out. There is no way to get around this only by modifying the client, because it's the server that is at fault here - the way it's designed is fundamentally unsuited for a web service.
I think you're on the right track with the incrementing IDs idea. The client knows (or can be modified to know) which notifications it's received, so if it can supply the ID of the last message it's received when it polls for notifications, the server should be able to respond based on that ID.
It really seems like Company A's webservice should be synchronous instead of asynchronous. If that is not possible, it may be a good idea to send a "ACK"-like response to a new Company A webservice that indicates a specific notification was received (by Company B) and can be deleted.