Talk:Direct Delivery and Automatic Notification System

Regarding the .NET example for the ANS verification, the use of FormsAuthentication.HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile() is somewhat unorthodox but it's a single call and it works. For an alternative I offer the following:

string calcHash; System.Security.Cryptography.SHA1Managed hashAlgorithm = new System.Security.Cryptography.SHA1Managed(); System.Text.ASCIIEncoding encoder = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding(); byte[] bytes = encoder.GetBytes(Request.Url.Query.Remove(0,1) + saltCode); bytes = hashAlgorithm.ComputeHash(bytes); calcHash = BitConverter.ToString(bytes).Replace("-","").ToLowerInvariant();

Antonius Frentis 18:10, 23 September 2012 (PDT)

Updated?

I see XStreet plastered all over this so I was wondering if this wiki is updated to all (if any) of the latest ANS features and specifications?

Also I suggest that this page be linked to from the ANS page on the marketplace instead of it just saying "For more information on ANS, please see the Knowledge Base.". Mainly because the knowledge base doesn't contain any ANS information but the wiki does ;-) Marc Adored 08:32, 19 January 2013 (PST)

Return values?

What returns values from scripts does SLM support? The SLX ANS system could return 'success' or 'failure', is that still what the SLM version expects? Also, I'm not clear on what "Orders on the SL Marketplace may contain up to 10 separate items, each detailed on a separate line" means. The article could really do with a properly coded PHP example showing off how to process an example request, ideally with script security best practices (use of mysqli_real_escape_string etc.).
-- Haravikk ^{(talk|contribs)} 08:38, 18 March 2013 (PDT)

How is it possible that this page is still the only reference on the subject?!

Ten years ago, @Marc Adored and @Haravikk Mistral made quite pertinent questions about this page, originally written by @Darrius Gothly in 2012.

A decade later, and the link on the SL Marketplace still doesn't exist. There is still no entry about ANS on the Knowledge Base. Googling/Binging on "second life automatic notification" or variations of those words will immediately point to this Wiki page instead. A page which nothing links to (at the time of writing). It's a singleton, only available for those who happen to have found the correct link.

I've also got quite a lot of questions/issues:

• It's not clear what is actually being sent/received and in which format. The table is quite informative in terms of field type and (maximum) size, but how is it actually presented? It's XML? JSON? Plain text, one field per line? Or a blob of binary data — and, if the latter, does it come with fixed-size fields or with \0-separated strings, or fields prefixed by its actual byte size? (since most entries are varchars...)
• Is the verification URL still https://www.xstreetsl.com/ans.php?VerifyKey=<VerifyKey>? Really? I would guess not, since that was used for the Magic Boxes, which currently I believe that SL Marketplace doesn't support. Direct Delivery will return an empty VerifyKey anyway, thus making this part of the explanation rather irrelevant (or so I think). LL is still holding on to the xstreetsl.com domain name, but it's not pointing anywhere.
• Where do Merchants find their "Salt Code"? I've turned the SL Marketplace upside down and couldn't find it anywhere. Is that a special functionality that you need to specifically request from Linden Lab?
• Like Haravikk Mistral, I would also prefer a fully functioning prototype (in PHP or whatever language you wish), not just the code for dealing with the hash. That's the least of my problems!

Note that I'm aware that ANS still works — Casper use it to get notifications into their system(s). Alas, especially now that they have been bought by Linden Lab, it's hardly reasonable to expect them to share their code with the rest of the world. So a bit more information would be kindly appreciated...

— Gwyneth Llewelyn (talk) 12:41, 15 May 2023 (PDT)