New Features and Breaking Changes

Chinese (China)

Keywords: SuperSocket 1.6, New Features, Breaking Changes, textEncoding, defaultCulture, Process Isolation, SuperSocket.Agent.exe

The new configuration attribute "textEncoding"

In the SuperSocket before 1.6, when you send a text message via session object, the default encoding to convert the text message to binary data which can be sent over socket is UTF8. You can change it by assigning a new encoding to the session's Charset property.

Now in SuperSocket 1.6, you can define the default text encoding in the configuration. The new attribute "textEncoding" has been added into the server configuration node:

<superSocket>
    <servers>
      <server name="TelnetServer"
          textEncoding="UTF-8"
          serverType="YourAppServer, YourAssembly"
          ip="Any" port="2020">
      </server>
    </servers>
</superSocket>

The new configuration attribute "defaultCulture"

This new added feature is only for the .Net framework 4.5 and above. It allows you to set default culture for all the threads, no matter how the threads are created, by programming or come from thread pool.

The new configuration attribute "defaultCulture" can be added in the root node or the server node, so you can configure the default culture for all the server instances or for each server instance separately:

<superSocket defaultCulture="en-US">
    <servers>
      <server name="TelnetServerA"
          serverType="YourAppServer, YourAssembly"
          ip="Any" port="2020">
      </server>
      <server name="TelnetServerB"
          defaultCulture="zn-CN"
          serverType="YourAppServer, YourAssembly"
          ip="Any" port="2021">
      </server>
      <server name="TelnetServerC"
          defaultCulture="zn-TW"
          serverType="YourAppServer, YourAssembly"
          ip="Any" port="2021">
      </server>
    </servers>
</superSocket>

Process level isolation

In SuperSocket 1.5, we added AppDomain level isolation, you can run your multiple appserver instances in the their own AppDomain. This feature provides higher level security and resource isolation and bring more benefits to the users who run SuperSocket as multiple hosting service.

In SuperSocket 1.6, we introduce much higher level isolation "Process". If you configure the SuperSocket in this kind isolation, you appserver instances will run in the separated processes. The configuration looks like that:

<superSocket isolation="Process">
    <servers>
      <server name="TelnetServerA"
          serverType="YourAppServer, YourAssembly"
          ip="Any" port="2020">
      </server>
      <server name="TelnetServerB"
          serverType="YourAppServer, YourAssembly"
          ip="Any" port="2021">
      </server>
    </servers>
</superSocket>

Beyond the configuration, you need to include an executable assembly "SuperSocket.Agent.exe" into your project output, which is provided by SuperSocket.

After you start your SuperSocket, you will find more processes of SuperSocket:

SuperSocket.SocketService.exe
SuperSocket.Agent.exe
SuperSocket.Agent.exe

Changes about the performance data collecting

The API collecting performance data has been changed, two virtual method have been changed:

protected virtual void UpdateServerSummary(ServerSummary serverSummary);

protected virtual void OnServerSummaryCollected(NodeSummary nodeSummary, ServerSummary serverSummary)

To:

protected virtual void UpdateServerStatus(StatusInfoCollection serverStatus)

protected virtual void OnServerStatusCollected(StatusInfoCollection nodeStatus, StatusInfoCollection serverStatus)

The classes ServerSummary and NodeSummary have been removed. Now you should use the class StatusInfoCollection.

The new configuration attribute "storeLocation" for the certificate node

You can specific the store location of the certificate which you want to load:

<certificate storeName="My" storeLocation="LocalMachine" thumbprint="‎f42585bceed2cb049ef4a3c6d0ad572a6699f6f3"/>

Start a connection from server initiatively

You can connect a remote endpoint from the server side initiatively, the following network communications after the connection is established are same with the connections started from clients.

var activeConnector = appServer as IActiveConnector;
var task = activeConnector.ActiveConnect(remoteEndPoint);
task.ContinueWith(
          t => Logger.InfoFormat("Client connected, SessionID: {0}", t.Result.Session.SessionID),
          TaskContinuationOptions.OnlyOnRanToCompletion);

SuperSocket ServerManager

Document of SuperSocket ServerManager

Client certificate validation

In TLS/SSL communications, the client side certificate is not a must, but some systems require much higher security guarantee. So some users asked the feature validating client certificate from the server side. Now in SuperSocket 1.6, this feature has been added.

At first, to enable the client certificate validation, you should add the attribute "clientCertificateRequired" in the certificate node of the configuration:

<certificate storeName="My"
             storeLocation="LocalMachine"
             clientCertificateRequired="true"
             thumbprint="‎f42585bceed2cb049ef4a3c6d0ad572a6699f6f3"/>

Then you can override the AppServer's method "ValidateClientCertificate(...)" the implement your validation logic:

protected override bool ValidateClientCertificate(YourSession session, object sender, X509Certificate certificate, X509Chain chain, SslPolicyErrors sslPolicyErrors)
{
   //Check sslPolicyErrors

   //Check certificate

   //Return checking result
   return true;
}