Determining CryptoAPI Constants with the ConstFinder Sample Application

Writing the ManagedCryptoAPI class required knowing a lot of the constant values that are defined as part of CryptoAPI. When writing native code, using these constants is easy because developers simply need to include the correct header files to access them.

The ConstFinder is an application for Embedded Visual C++ 3.0 that was used to determine the actual constant values needed to write ManagedCryptoAPI . This project will also load under Embedded Visual C++ 4.0. It is included in the folder \SampleApplications\Chapter14\Windows_ConstFinder.

ConstFinder simply sets local variables to the values of the constants, which makes it easy to learn their values by using a debugger.

If you don't have Embedded Visual C++ or are simply not interested in knowing how the various constant values in ManagedCryptoAPI were discovered , you don't need to worry about the ConstFinder. It is included only for your convenience.