Signing on iOS with a USB Token or Smartcard

Chilkat v10.0.0 is able to create digital signatures for PDF, XmlDSig (XAdES), CAdES, S/MIME, etc. using the HSM (USB token or smartcard) connected to an iPhone.  It’s just a matter of calling the certificate object’s LoadFromSmartcard function.  You’ll also need to add the “com.apple.token” entitlement to your application. Here are some examples: Objective-C Sign PDF using USB Token or Smartcard […]

Chilkat v10.0.0 ActiveX Registration and Object Creation

Chilkat adopted standard semantic versioning starting with Chilkat version 10.0.0.  See https://cknotes.com/semantic-versioning-starting-with-chilkat-10-0-0/ For this discussion, it’s important to understand the fundamentals of ActiveX registration.  To ensure a basic understanding, I recommend briefly reviewing the tutorial web pages at https://chilkatsoft.com/activex_dll_registration_tutorial.asp It should take only 10 minutes, and I promise it will save you much time and frustration. ActiveX Object Creation / […]

Semantic Versioning Starting with Chilkat 10.0.0

Starting with the v10.0.0 release (end of September 2024), Chilkat moves to standard semantic versioning.   Prior to this release, for various technical reasons, Chilkat was stuck with versions 9.5.0.xx, where only xx changed. For this first leap to semantic versioning, where the major version changes to 10 (from 9), there are no backward incompatible changes.  Going forward, when we move […]

About the LastErrorText property

Most Chilkat classes have a LastErrorText property.  It contains detailed contextual information about what transpired in the last method called on an object instance. The LastErrorText will contain information even when the method succeeds.  This allows us to understand what happened when a method succeeds, but for some reason doesn’t behave as expected. Important: Each time a method is called, […]

Postman –> cURL –> Generate Chilkat Application Code

Chilkat provies an online tool at https://tools.chilkat.io/curlHttp  to generate application code from a cURL statement. If you have an HTTP/REST request working in Postman, you can get the cURL statement, and then paste the cURL statement into Chilkat’s online tool to generate your application code. Get cURL statement from Postman Request To get the cURL statement from a Postman request, […]

Accented Chars in HTML Displayed as Question Marks in Black Diamonds

The issue of accented characters being displayed as question marks in black diamonds (�) in your browser usually stems from character encoding problems. Here are the most common causes and solutions: 1. Incorrect Character Encoding in the HTML Document The browser needs to know the correct encoding to properly display accented characters. If the document’s encoding is not set correctly, […]

How Deep Inspection Firewalls can Interfere with FTP Uploads and Downloads

Deep inspection firewalls, also known as deep packet inspection (DPI) firewalls, analyze the content of network traffic beyond basic header information, inspecting the payload of packets to enforce security policies, detect anomalies, and filter out malicious data. While this provides enhanced security, deep inspection can interfere with FTP uploads and downloads due to the unique characteristics of the FTP protocol. […]

How SFTP and FTP are Different Protocols

How SFTP and FTP Are Different Protocols SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) may both be used for file transfers, but they are fundamentally different protocols in their design, security mechanisms, and underlying technologies. 1. SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol): Not an Extension of FTP: SFTP is not related to FTP. It’s a completely different protocol […]

SFTP Public Key Authentication with id_ed25519

Question: I have a vendor that wants me to send text files to their SFTP server. They want me to use SFTP to send the files. I have other vendors to which I use SFTP to send files but they use a password for authentication. I use Chilkat libraries to do the SFTP to those vendors. This vendor has supplied […]