ASP.net guidance for a newbie

ALX

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 16, 2005
Messages
253
Location
Columbia, SC
Programming Experience
10+
I need some guidance:
I have an app that will be available for download from the internet, initially as a trial version. If / when the user decides to purchase the app for use beyond the trial period, they would link to my website to fill in a brief form and the server should return a unique code that allows the program to run indefinitely on their machine only. This code is based on a chopped down version of the user machines' motherboard ID + BIOS id. This all works well within the code that is already installed on the users' system as a trial version.

So my next step was to develop a web site that could handle that task. I looked into using ASP.net core to send the basic form to run on the client's machine so that the Motherboard & BIOS ID #'s could be added to the form at that time. Unfortunately, it appears that the System.Management library is not made available to ASP.net applications, I'm guessing for security reasons. So to side step that hurtle, I was considering merely uploading a form that was generated within currently installed trial application to the server with the user's Name, e-mail & device ID numbers. Sounds great but I don't know how the server would link back the the user just because they uploaded a file to my website. I'm wondering if I had the installed trial app create a file on the user's machine with pre-fetched ID numbers that the client side script could just retrieve the info from a file rather than try to access the devices' ID numbers directly... or is that another feature that ASP.net lacks. Maybe the trial app on the User's machine could add this data to a cookie or local storage which would then be accessible to a client side script...?

I apologize that I'm such a newbie in this realm of software. My strengths were in VB. I started the Basic language back when IBM computers came with 2 floppy drives and no hard drive. I survived through Quick Basic when we could compile our Basic language code. I live and breathe Basic but I don't know squat about ASP.net core and have only recently started learning C#. and that was only to insert the C# code into my ASP.net application for pulling these ID numbers via some client side script.

I'm looking for some insights on a way to accomplish this task. I don't need a hand out, just a little guidance.

Thanx in advance !!!
 
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Thanks for the response JM. I"m looking into that now. It appears to be many layers of complexity deeper than I expected and will introduce a steep learning curve for me, but I'll try to muscle through it. I appreciate your lead !
 
Not really. A Web API service is basically the same as an MVC site but without the views. Making calls to a Web API service from WinForms is not especially difficult.
 
That's funny... I just stumbled across using an API as an alternative while researching this. It appears that I can build an API in Visual Studio 2019. Now I need to find the simplest example I can find and dissect it. The amount of data that I need to send is very small and I don't need a user interface. This is great. Thank You !
 
Hey JM:
Thanks for mentioning MVC. It's something I had never looked into. This is perfect for everything I need to do. I can bundle all of my normal HTML pages within the same app and have the power and access to the data I need to make this work without trying to insert a bunch of script throughout my HTML pages. Once I wrapped my head around the details of making MVC work for me, it seems to be a well organized process.
 
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