Connect to Microsoft Push Notification Service for Windows Phone 8 from Ruby - ruby

Question

We are developing a WP8 app that requires push notifications.
To test it we have run the push notification POST request with CURL command line, making sure that it actually connects, authenticates with the client SSL certificate and sends the correct data. We know for a fact that this work as we are receiving pushes to the devices.
This is the CURL command we have been using for testing purposes:
curl --cert client_cert.pem -v -H "Content-Type:text/xml" -H "X-WindowsPhone-Target:Toast" -H "X-NotificationClass:2" -X POST -d "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?><wp:Notification xmlns:wp='WPNotification'><wp:Toast><wp:Text1>My title</wp:Text1><wp:Text2>My subtitle</wp:Text2></wp:Toast></wp:Notification>" https://db3.notify.live.net/unthrottledthirdparty/01.00/AAF9MBULkDV0Tpyj24I3bzE3AgAAAAADCQAAAAQUZm52OkE1OUZCRDkzM0MyREY1RkE
Of course our SSL cert is needed to actually use the URL, but I was hoping someone else has done this and can see what we are doing wrong.
Now, our problem is that we need to make this work with Ruby instead, something we have been unable to get to work so far.
We have tried using HTTParty with no luck, and also net/http directly without any luck.
Here is a very simple HTTParty test script I have used to test with:
require "httparty"
payload = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?><wp:Notification xmlns:wp='WPNotification'><wp:Toast><wp:Text1>My title</wp:Text1><wp:Text2>My subtitle</wp:Text2></wp:Toast></wp:Notification>"
uri = "https://db3.notify.live.net/unthrottledthirdparty/01.00/AAF9MBULkDV0Tpyj24I3bzE3AgAAAAADCQAAAAQUZm52OkE1OUZCRDkzM0MyREY1RkE"
opts = {
body: payload,
headers: {
"Content-Type" => "text/xml",
"X-WindowsPhone-Target" => "Toast",
"X-NotificationClass" => "2"
},
debug_output: $stderr,
pem: File.read("/Users/kenny/Desktop/client_cert.pem"),
ca_file: File.read('/usr/local/opt/curl-ca-bundle/share/ca-bundle.crt')
}
resp = HTTParty.post uri, opts
puts resp.code
This seems to connect with SSL properly, but then the MS IIS server returns 403 to us for some reason we don't get.
Here is essentially the same thing I've tried using net/http:
require "net/http"
url = URI.parse "https://db3.notify.live.net/unthrottledthirdparty/01.00/AAF9MBULkDV0Tpyj24I3bzE3AgAAAAADCQAAAAQUZm52OkE1OUZCRDkzM0MyREY1RkE"
payload = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?><wp:Notification xmlns:wp='WPNotification'><wp:Toast><wp:Text1>My title</wp:Text1><wp:Text2>My subtitle</wp:Text2></wp:Toast></wp:Notification>"
pem_path = "./client_cert.pem"
cert = File.read pem_path
http = Net::HTTP.new url.host, url.port
http.use_ssl = true
http.cert = OpenSSL::X509::Certificate.new cert
http.key = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new cert
http.ca_path = '/etc/ssl/certs' if File.exists?('/etc/ssl/certs') # Ubuntu
http.ca_file = '/usr/local/opt/curl-ca-bundle/share/ca-bundle.crt' if File.exists?('/usr/local/opt/curl-ca-bundle/share/ca-bundle.crt') # Mac OS X
http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER
r = Net::HTTP::Post.new url.path
r.body = payload
r.content_type = "text/xml"
r["X-WindowsPhone-Target"] = "toast"
r["X-NotificationClass"] = "2"
http.start do
resp = http.request r
puts resp.code, resp.body
end
Like the HTTParty version, this also returns 403..
I'm starting to get the feeling that this won't actually work with net/http, but I've also seen a few examples of code claiming to work, but I can't see any difference compared to what we have tested with here.
Does anyone know how to fix this? Is it possible? Should I use libcurl instead perhaps? Or even do a system call to curl? (I may have to do the last one as an interim solution if we can't get this to work soon).
Any input is greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Kenny

Answer 1

Try using some tool like http://mitmproxy.org to compare requests from your code and curl.
For example curl in addition to specified headers does send User-Agent and Accept-headers, microsoft servers may be checking for these for some reason.
If this does not help - then it's ssl-related