Switching to reCAPTCHA for Comment Spam protection

Published:
3 min read

reCAPTCHA

I recently posted about using CAPTCHA on my blog in an attempt to reduce the amount of comment spam. The implementation I posted about has worked well for me but I decided I would like to switch to reCAPTCHA. Not only is this free CAPTCHA service robust and well tested, it also helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. Taking the thousands of hours people spend entering CAPTCHA information each day and utilizing them for an additional purpose is a brilliant idea.

As with the previous solution I was sure that someone would have already done the work to integrate reCAPTCHA with BlogEngine.NET. My assumption was correct and I quickly found a solution in the form of an extension written by Filip Stanek. I followed the simple installation process and had the control appearing in the comment form straight away. After a short period of testing I quickly found a couple of problems. Once the first comment was added all subsequent comments entered resulting in an error that was reported via the callback. The log viewer added to the administration area was also throwing an exception and failing to load.

I tracked both of these problems down to the extension expecting the return value from BlogService.LoadFromDataStore to be a Stream. This method returns an object instance and delegates its work to the currently configured BlogProvider. The BlogProvider.LoadFromDataStore method also returns object, and it turns out that the type of the object returned will be different depending on the provider being used. My data store is a VistaDB.NET database so I am using the DbBlogProvider instead of the default XmlBlogProvider. Unfortunately the DbBlogProvider returns a string and the XmlBlogProvider returns a Stream. There is nothing stopping the next provider that is written from returning yet another type. This no doubt makes life difficult for those writing BlogEngine.NET extensions.

To get the extension working with the DbBlogProvider you will need to make a couple of small changes. In the Recaptcha.cs file, find the code below in the UpdateLog method.

Stream s = (Stream)BlogService.LoadFromDataStore(BlogEngine.Core.DataStore.ExtensionType.Extension, "RecaptchaLog");
List<RecaptchaLogItem> log = new List<RecaptchaLogItem>();
if (s != null)
{
    System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(List<RecaptchaLogItem>));
    log = (List<RecaptchaLogItem>)serializer.Deserialize(s);
    s.Close();
}
log.Add(logItem);

Replace it with the following code.

string data = (string)BlogService.LoadFromDataStore(BlogEngine.Core.DataStore.ExtensionType.Extension, "RecaptchaLog");
List<RecaptchaLogItem> log = new List<RecaptchaLogItem>();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(data))
{
    using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(data)))
    {
        System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(List<RecaptchaLogItem>));
        log = (List<RecaptchaLogItem>)serializer.Deserialize(stream);
    }
}
log.Add(logItem);

In the RecaptchaLogViewer.aspx.cs file, find the code below in the BindGrid method.

Stream s = (Stream)BlogService.LoadFromDataStore(BlogEngine.Core.DataStore.ExtensionType.Extension, "RecaptchaLog");
List<RecaptchaLogItem> log = new List<RecaptchaLogItem>();
if (s != null)
{
    System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(List<RecaptchaLogItem>));
    log = (List<RecaptchaLogItem>)serializer.Deserialize(s);
    s.Close();
}

Replace it with the following code.

string data = (string)BlogService.LoadFromDataStore(BlogEngine.Core.DataStore.ExtensionType.Extension, "RecaptchaLog");
List<RecaptchaLogItem> log = new List<RecaptchaLogItem>();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(data))
{
    using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(data)))
    {
        System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(List<RecaptchaLogItem>));
        log = (List<RecaptchaLogItem>)serializer.Deserialize(stream);
    }
}

You should now be able to use the extension with the DbBlogProvider without any problems. The rest of the extension seems to work without any problems and appears to be well written overall. It is definitely worth checking out if you are looking for a reCAPTCHA solution for BlogEngine.NET.

#blogengine-net