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How do I decode the rdweb/feed/webfeed.aspx content from a Microsoft remote desktop(RDP) server?

I am having difficulty locating the encoding of the webfeed.aspx or more specifically https:// RDP url /rdweb/feed/webfeed.aspx url of the RDP client. In Microsoft's RDP client, the data resolves to references to directories and applications that can be used as shortcuts for the RDP connection.

The file that I get appears to be a base64 encoded file. From what I have read, this should be an XML file that describes the resources, but it seems to be compressed or encoded somehow. I am having no issue getting the data. I can read it via a browser (though not understand it) and Microsoft's RDP client is pulling the data appropriately, so the data is good. I need to decode/process the data because I am extending an open source RDP tool to do the same as Microsoft's RDP client.

Here is an example,from the text file from a test server's rdweb/feed/webfeed.aspx

46672D19C141995BFAA3317324E7595B8AF001B09CF315A3668E2335F383079AA7397E6E8ADF56379306F18DCCFFB4A542CC4C8B81609D5E9D738F8347BC0372EB7513DD797EF0BFA921F7D6E2A108C6A12F44712D57D6191FB068AF1733256291BC0BD7429AD585DA9E6ECC3D1380562A091E980D6908E2E0EF4184689329686AD132E2D63945810D93F88ECAEC6A0B9460F23B9ABF229F974D3B32D0D7415CD8EAF1B6B93678718C9E658F0CEDA604D5294FF3458FB2ABD798A668E8E6714939C8115EC00A13354F8EF22563CF65F5C6D053306D4C3276032D045752412BA760C683C5

Joel Coehoorn
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turbogeek
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    This looks like a duplicate of: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7179951/how-to-consume-aspx-webservices-in-ios – ctlacko Nov 13 '13 at 17:56
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    Not a duplicate because that question is related to using SOAP in general. Assuming this is not directly a SOAP call because a simple hit of the URL returns data. There could be soap within the webfeed.aspx page, but that is unavailable to me to manipulate and even less documentation. – turbogeek Nov 13 '13 at 18:08
  • That's obviously HEX data: any digit, but no alpha character > F. It needs to be converted to ascii or binary. The ascii conversion is mainly unprintable characters, so this is likely binary data. – Joel Coehoorn Nov 22 '13 at 15:34
  • Indeed it is binary. What I am looking for is how to convert this to something I can read programmatically. – turbogeek Nov 22 '13 at 19:28

1 Answers1

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Have you tried something like this?

HttpWebRequest httpWebRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("https://RDPurl/rdweb/feed/webfeed.aspx");

HttpWebResponse httpWebResponse = (HttpWebResponse)httpWebRequest.GetResponse();

string connectionXml;

using (StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(httpWebResponse.GetResponseStream()))
{
    connectionXml = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
}

More detailed code is here.

The resulting connectionXml string should be Resource List Syntax.

Rich C
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