First of all I would like to apologize for the long delay between posts.  The holidays, a new baby, and work schedule had me running around quite a bit.  Anyway I'm back blogging and one of my new years resolutions was to keep doing brain dumps here in the hopes that it would help me lose the 20 pounds of sympathy weight that I gained during my wife's pregnancy. 

This month I wanted to cover something that I worked on some time ago because I dont see a lot of information elsewhere on how to work with a CA programmatically.  This is probably because a lot of people dont really need to do this, and CertUtil is a great command-line utility that has a ton of features.  However there may be a case or two where you want to write something yourself.  In the code below I will try to explain the basics of working with a Certificate Authority database. 

The key to connecting to the Certificate Authority is the ICertView interface (https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa385414(VS.85).aspx).  Through this interface you can get all the information you need from the CA.  To get a reference to ICertView you will need to include a reference to Certadm.dll.  This dll is present on server versions Windows 2000 and later.

Step 1:  Connecting to the Certificate Authority

Connecting to the CA is fairly simple.  Just create an instance of CCertView and use OpenConnection();

CERTADMINLib.CCertView CView = new CERTADMINLib.CCertViewClass();

CView.OpenConnection(server + "\\" + ca);

I would like to note that the ca parameter is the name of  your CA that you specified when you installed Certificate Services.

Step 2:  Get a column count and place columns into the view

int iColumnCount = 0;

iColumnCount = CView.GetColumnCount(0);

CView.SetResultColumnCount(iColumnCount);

// Place each column in the view.

for (int x = 0; x < iColumnCount; x++)

{

      CView.SetResultColumn(x);

}

Step 3:  Open the View and reset the row position

//Open the View

CERTADMINLib.IEnumCERTVIEWROW rowsEnum;

rowsEnum = CView.OpenView();

CERTADMINLib.IEnumCERTVIEWCOLUMN objCol;

rowsEnum.Reset();

Step 4:  Enumerate Row and Column Information

There are too many columns to list here, but you should get the picture.  Pay attention to the PROPTYPE of the data that you want to retrieve.   Here are some constants you will need in your application:

public const int CV_OUT_BASE64 = 0x1;

public const int CV_OUT_BINARY = 0x2;

public const int CV_OUT_HEX = 0x4;

public const int CV_OUT_HEXASCII = 0x5;

public const int PROPTYPE_LONG = 0x1;

public const int PROPTYPE_DATE = 0x2;

public const int PROPTYPE_BINARY = 0x3;

public const int PROPTYPE_STRING = 0x4;

public const int PROPTYPE_MASK = 0xFF;

//Enumerate Rows                                                       

while (rowsEnum.Next() != -1)

{

      Certificate cert = new Certificate();

      objCol = rowsEnum.EnumCertViewColumn();

      //Enumerate Columns                            

      while (objCol.Next() != -1)

      {

            switch (objCol.GetDisplayName())

            {

                  case "Request Disposition Message":

                        try

                        {

                          cert.DispMessage = objCol.GetValue(PROPTYPE_STRING).ToString();

                        }

                        catch

                        {

                              //Exception Handling

                        }

                        break;

                  case "Certificate Expiration Date":

                        try

                        {

                          cert.ExpirationDate = objCol.GetValue(PROPTYPE_DATE).ToString();

                        }

                        catch

                        {

                              //Exception Handling

                        }

         break;

                  default: 

                        break;

            }

      }

}

That's about it.  You can now add logic to work with your certificates.  Additional name properties are located here (https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa386991(VS.85).aspx).  Happy coding.

One issue with WPD development that I didn't find any reference to was getting storage information so I jumped into it by trying to use GetDiskFreeSpaceEx().  I thought that this was a safe place to start, but my assumptions got the best of me.  It turns out that WPD devices dont hook into the System Volume APIs, and you need to get storage information through the WPD Storage Properties. 

I've included a short sample below.  I hope it saves someone from making the same assumption I did.

HRESULT     hr = S_OK;

DWORD       cPnPDeviceIDs = 0;

LPWSTR      DeviceId = NULL;

TCHAR       szDebugMsg[256] = TEXT("");

try

{

CComPtr<IPortableDeviceManager> spDevMgr;

hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_PortableDeviceManager, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER,

IID_IPortableDeviceManager, (VOID**) &spDevMgr);      

      // Get the device (I use a helper function here.  Not shown)

DeviceId = CCommonFunctions::GetDevice(spDevMgr, deviceFriendlyName);

// Create an instance of a Values collection to hold the client information

      CComPtr<IPortableDeviceValues> spClientInfo;

hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_PortableDeviceValues, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IPortableDeviceValues, (VOID**)&spClientInfo);

      // Add client information to the Values collection

      hr = spClientInfo->SetStringValue(WPD_CLIENT_NAME, L"Enumerator");       

      hr = spClientInfo->SetUnsignedIntegerValue(WPD_CLIENT_MAJOR_VERSION, 1);

      hr = spClientInfo->SetUnsignedIntegerValue(WPD_CLIENT_MINOR_VERSION, 0);

      hr = spClientInfo->SetUnsignedIntegerValue(WPD_CLIENT_REVISION, 0);

      // Create an instance of the first WPD device

      CComPtr<IPortableDevice> spDevice;

hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_PortableDevice, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IPortableDevice, (VOID**) &spDevice);

      // Connect to the device

      BOOL bDeviceOpened = TRUE;

hr = spDevice->Open(_bstr_t(DeviceId), spClientInfo);

CComPtr<IPortableDeviceContent> spContent;

      hr = spDevice->Content(&spContent);

      CComPtr<IPortableDeviceProperties> spProperties;

      hr = spContent->Properties(&spProperties);

      // Enumerate children (if any) of provided object

      CComPtr<IEnumPortableDeviceObjectIDs> spEnum;

      hr = spContent->EnumObjects(0, WPD_DEVICE_OBJECT_ID, NULL, &spEnum);

      // Get the first object.  This should be the primary storage object

      LPWSTR pwszStorageObjectId = NULL;

      ULONG celtFetched = 0;

      hr = spEnum->Next(1, &pwszStorageObjectId, &celtFetched);

      // We'll need an IPortableDeviceKeyCollection instance

      CComPtr<IPortableDeviceKeyCollection> spKeys;

hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_PortableDeviceKeyCollection, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IPortableDeviceKeyCollection, (VOID**) &spKeys);

      //Specify the properties that we need to retrieve

      hr = spKeys->Add(WPD_STORAGE_CAPACITY);

      CComPtr<IPortableDeviceValues> spValues;

      hr = spProperties->GetValues(pwszStorageObjectId, spKeys, &spValues);

      ULONGLONG ullDiskTotalBytes = 0;

hr = spValues->GetUnsignedLargeIntegerValue(WPD_STORAGE_CAPACITY, &ullDiskTotalBytes);

      *ReturnVal = ullDiskTotalBytes;

      // Cleanup

      CoTaskMemFree(pwszStorageObjectId);

      ullDiskTotalBytes = NULL;

      // Close connection to the device

      if (bDeviceOpened)

      {

            hr = spDevice->Close();

      }

      // Free memory allocated by the GetDevices call

      if (DeviceId != NULL)

      {

            CoTaskMemFree(DeviceId);

      }

}

catch (_com_error &e)

{

      HRESULT _hr = e.Error();

      wsprintf(szDebugMsg, TEXT("Caught an error %08x - %s"), _hr, e.Description());

      OutputDebugString(szDebugMsg);

      AtlThrow(_hr);

}

return S_OK;

An Infraloper is simply someone who operates in both infrastructure and development disciplines.  I've found that each discipline is often siloed and organized into discrete groups, but I've found a lot of value and passion working professionally in both.  I once explained myself as bi-technical but this was met with an awkward stare.  Sadly we still aren't accepted in some circles...  This blog will likely be an eclectic combination of interesting topics and issues that I run into when loping about at home or in the office.  I hope you find something interesting or helpful here.  Please feel free to ask questions or send comments.