hello geeks,
this is my first post, and my question is...
i have some text files from which my app reads and process data, these text files are in hundreds and i am now providing them in a folder, but these should not be accessed by others, how i can do this? plz help me.
my app is written in vb .net
These text files are they static or dynamic?
If they're dynamic, I'll assume another application is supplying them and then there is little you can do. You might be able to create an ACL and limit the number of people who can use and or look at the application and the data.
If they're static, you can do a couple of things to make more difficult to look at but if someone is determined there are ways around almost anything you do.
One thing you can do, instead of text files, you can incorporate the files into your application as resources. You would have to recompile the application every time you changed one of the text resources which could be a pain depending on distribution of you application and how many people receive it.
Another idea would be to encrypt the files and allow the application to decrypt them in memory to read them. But this would require you to encrypt text files prior to distribution; moreover, there would be no quick editing of the text files in place with notepad.
Or lastly, convert the files over to a secure database. Depending on the database you choose it could become an administration headache depending on distribution or would you self host a public database. This would be the most secure method.
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