This post demonstrates how you can hard code user authentication claims in ASP.NET Core; a useful technique to facilate testing during development.
I recently had need to be able to access the API for Google Analytics from ASP.Net Core. Getting this up and running turned out to be surprisingly tough because of an absence of good examples. So here it is; an example of how you can access a simple page access stat using the API:
This post demonstrates a mechanism for proxying HTTP requests in ASP.NET Core. It doesn't proxy all requests; it only proxies requests that match entries on an "allowlist" - so we only proxy the traffic that we've actively decided is acceptable as determined by taking the form of an expected URL and HTTP verb (GET / POST etc).
One thing that ASP.Net Core really got right was caching. IMemoryCache is a caching implementation that does just what I want.
I having a web app which is fairly complex. It's made up of services, controllers and all sorts of things. So far, so unremarkable. However, I needed to ensure that the controllers did not attempt to access the database via any of their dependencies. Or their dependencies, dependencies. Or their dependencies. You get my point.
Most applications I write have some need for authentication and perhaps authorisation too. In fact, most apps most people write fall into that bracket. Here's the thing: Auth done well is a *big* chunk of work. And the minute you start thinking about that you almost invariably lose focus on the thing you actually want to build and ship.
AppVeyor has support for setting the version of a binary during a build. However - this deals with the classic ASP.Net world of AssemblyInfo. I didn't find any reference to support for doing the same with dot net core. Remember, dot net core relies upon a <Version> or a <VersionPrefix> setting in the .csproj file. Personally, <Version> is my jam.
I've been using Visual Studio for a long time. Very good it is too. However, it is heavyweight; it does far more than I need. What I really want when I'm working is a fast snappy editor, with intellisense and debugging. What I've basically described is VS Code. It rocks and has long become my go-to editor for TypeScript.
I'd like you to close your eyes and imagine a scenario. You're handed a prototype system. You're told it works. It has no documentation. It has 0 unit tests. The hope is that you can take it on, refactor it, make it better and (crucially) not break it. Oh, and you don't really understand what the code does or why it does it either; information on that front is, alas, sorely lacking.
So, you want to use C# 6 language features and you’re working on an older project that’s still rocking .NET 4.5. Well, with some caveats, you can.
This is a guide on how not to expose all your static files to the world at large when working with the ASP.Net Framework. How to move from a blocklisting approach to a allowlisting approach.
I thought as I start the NgValidationFor project I'd journal my progress. I'm writing this with someone particular in mind: me. Specifically, me in 2 years who will no doubt wonder why I made some of the choices I did. Everyone else, move along now - nothing to see. Unless the inner workings of someone else's mind are interesting to you... In which case: welcome!
So. You want to kick hash based routing to the kerb. You want real URLs. You've read the HTML5 mode section of the Angular $location docs and you're good to go. It's just a matter of dropping $locationProvider.html5Mode(true) into your app initialisation right?
Wrong.
In the name of DRY I found myself puzzling how one could take a PartialViewResult and render it as a string. Simple, right?
This is very probably the dullest title for a blog post I've ever come up with. Read on though folks - it's definitely going to pick up...
"Automation, automation, automation." Those were and are Tony Blair's priorities for keeping open source projects well maintained.
Up until, well yesterday really, I tended to have my Web API action methods all returning 200's no matter what. Successful request? 200 for you sir! Some validation error in the model? 200 for you too ma'am - but I'll wrap up the validation errors and send them back too. Database error? 200 and and an error message.
So. You're using AngularJS to build your front end with ASP.Net running on the server side. You're a trustworthy dev - you know that validation on the client will only get you so far. You need to validate on the server.
Having put together a demo of using TypeScript with RequireJS my attention turned quickly to caching. Or rather, IE forced me to think about caching.