The Task Parallel Library contains a very interesting set of dataflow components that for some reason they didn’t get the attention they deserve. This set is called TPL Dataflow Library and in few words, it is a robust in-process actor library that worth spending some time learning it! In this post, we will learn how to use it for concurrency testing.
Read More »Using TPL Dataflow Library for Concurrency Testing
Automated testing is an important part of modern software production as it ensures higher quality and faster delivery, and on the same time it makes testing more affordable. Integration tests, sitting just between Unit Tests and E2E tests, improve test coverage and ensure proper communication between units. In this post, we will explore the possibilities of integration testing of ASP.NET Core by using xUnit to create a test for multiple endpoints.
LiteDB is serverless MongoDB-like database delivered in a single DLL (less than 350kb) fully written in .NET C# managed code (compatible with .NET 3.5, 4.x, NETStandard 1.3 and 2.0). It is ideal for mobile apps or for small desktop/web apps, and its API is very similar to MongoDB C# Official Driver.
In this post, we will see how to use LiteDB as a storage for an ASP.NET API and do simple CRUD operations with it.
Read More »Using LiteDB in an ASP.NET Core API
ASP.NET Core supports creating RESTful services, also known as web APIs. To handle requests, a web API uses controllers with actions (in essence methods) that return an ActionResult. Since an ActionResult can be almost anything (it’s like returning an object from your methods), it makes sense to know how to use it and when to choose to return a specific type instead.
Let’s go through the each different return type, starting from the simplest one and work our why towards the most generic ActionResult.
Middlewares are a fundamental part of any ASP.NET Core application, introduced from day one. They are executed in the order they are added on every request, and could be considered similar to the HttpHandlers and HttpModules of the classic ASP.NET. Since middlewares can execute code before or after calling the next in the pipeline, they are considered ideal for a ton of various application features, including exception handling, logging, authentication etc.
You can learn more about middlewares by learning how to create a simple exception handling middleware.
Read More »Unit testing a custom middleware in ASP.NET Core API
We all know the traditional try-catch blocks and -used correctly- there is of course nothing wrong with them! But even though all is good with that, ASP.NET Core has an even better way of doing things, two ways actually, that can make our code cleaner and easier to read! By following the “Middleware” approach, we extract all our custom exception handling code from within the actions and centralizing it in one place thus, cleaner code!
In this post we will explore these three cases, and starting from the simple try-catch block we will refactor towards a custom error handling middleware.
This is an end-to-end guide on how to quickly setup IdentityServer4, use it in your ASP.NET Core API for authentication, and finally login to your API from a client by asking a user for her/his username and password. It is divided in three parts that describe respectively the configuration of each one of the following three systems:
Read More »IdentityServer4, ASP.NET Core API and a client with username/password
As most of us, I already know my next week work schedule. It includes writing some actions in respond to a requirement for excel exports. It’s nothing new and its’s relatively easy with libraries like NPOI: you just create your excel on the fly and return a FileResult.
Read how to create an excel on the fly inside your action here: http://www.talkingdotnet.com/import-export-excel-asp-net-core-2-razor-pages/
And that could be the end of story for that requirement, but while walking home for the weekend I remembered about the XmlSerializerOutputFormatter I read on Microsoft Docs. The idea was to write my own ExcelOutputFormatter to respond to client requests with an Excel instead of a JSON.
ASP.NET Core offers a very cool way to avoid all that boring boilerplate exception handling code, just by intercepting all requests. It is called Middleware and actually, ASP.NET Core is full of built-in middlewares!
Read More »Handling, serializing and returning exceptions with a middleware in an ASP.NET Core API
Have you seen this error?
An error occurred while starting the application.
.NET Core <version> | Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting <version> | Microsoft Windows <version> | Need help?
It looks like this in your browser:
Besides that one hint, that the error is while starting, it’s not very descriptive, right?
Althouth there many things that could go wrong and the proper way is to actually troubleshoot the error, I end up googling about this for over an hour! In my search I found numerous articles but it turned out that for me the solution was simple!
Read More »Publishing ASP.NET Core: An error occurred while starting the application