Question

I need to send a request from a php server to a .NET one.
This request have to be cypted, so I thought about

• Serializing the params
• Cypting
• Base64 encode to put it as HTTP request

Here how I would do in php

$url = 'http://my.server.net';
$params = array('var1' => 5, 'var2' => 'machin', 'var3' => 'chose');
$serialized = json_encode($params);
$crypted = encrypt($serialized, $salt);
$request = $url.'?'.base64_encode($crypted);

encrypt() would encrypt the serialized params with flavoring.

Questions are

1. Which functions should I use to encrypt my message for it to be
   easily decrypted with .net ?
2. Is json a good serialization choice for .net ?

I know nothing about .net, that will be done by other guys

Answer 1

For question one

• PHP side I think you can use the openssl extension of php http://php.net/manual/fr/book.openssl.php. It brings you a powerful API to do what you want.

• .NET side You can have a look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.security.sslstream.aspx or http://www.dart.com/sockets-net-api-library.aspx

For question 2:

json is a good serialisation tool but a bit lossy as it is typeless.
So two solutions here :

• you know that the .net application will share the same class architecture as yours so using serialize() is good.

• you do not know that or you know that it will be developped other way so json_encode is the best way to do that. I just want to point out the fact that if you five it as GET you will be limited to 255 chars instead of infinite if you chose a POST request.
  Moreover you have to urlencode your json datas if you want them to be readable

To send a POST request instead of a GET you can have a look at this script :
http://www.jonasjohn.de/snippets/php/post-request.htm