Tag: .NET

From ASP.NET Core to Hugo: My Blog's Migration to Cloudflare

Like many developers, my blogging journey started with WordPress. More than 20 years ago. It was convenient, widely supported, and quick to set up. But over time, the drawbacks began to pile up: security issues, constant updates, performance tuning, plugin juggling, costly – the overhead was real. I wanted something more streamlined, something that gave me control without stealing my time.

Task.Run vs. TaskFactory.StartNew

When working with asynchronous or parallel code in C#, you’ll inevitably encounter two common ways to start tasks: Task.Run and TaskFactory.StartNew. At first glance, they seem similar - but they behave differently and should be used appropriately depending on the context.

Standardizing AI Context: the Model Context Protocol

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) server acts as a centralized context management backend for advanced AI applications.

Unlike traditional session or prompt-based approaches, the MCP server manages a persistent, structured context that can be queried, updated and synchronized across distributed AI components and user sessions. By providing a standard API for serializing, retrieving and sharing context, the MCP server enables seamless interoperability between different models, services and clients. This is particularly important in multi-agent systems, long-running workflows or environments where state continuity and context portability are required.

Read DNS entries with .NET

.NET does not have a built-in mechanism for querying DNS records; nevertheless, this is a use case that is required relatively often.

Create a custom captcha provider with ASP.NET Core

Nowadays, you can’t actually run a website on the Internet without having a protection mechanism against content bots. One possibility is the use of CAPTCHAs. CAPTCHAs are small tasks that a human can easily solve, but a bot (almost) cannot.

New Format Options of System.Text.Json with .NET 9

With .NET 9, Microsoft has added new options to the System.Text.Json library to format the output of JSON objects - features that, in my opinion, should have been available with day 1.

Compile your .NET projects with multiple SDKs on GitHub

The recommended variant for specifying the SDK in .NET is the global.json file. This centrally guarantees that all computers on which the code is compiled ideally have the same SDK installed and use it.

When to use records in C#

For several years now, C# has supported Records as a new “type”. Initially only for classes (which is why the class is optional for a record class), later also for structs. Records are specially designed for use as data containers aka DTOs (please dont use DTO in your class name!). They are immutable and have special semantics for equality.

Create an anti-idle App for Microsoft Teams with .NET

Anti-idle apps for Microsoft Teams and the like are a dime a dozen, but how about creating your own? In this article, I’ll show you how to create an anti-idle app for Microsoft Teams using .NET and C#.

Create QRCodes with .NET and ZXing

QR Codes are a very popular way to pass on information - for example an URL. The QR code can be placed on all kinds of places, for example in parking lots for buying parking tickets.

Create an Entra Local User Account via Microsoft Graph with .NET

The Microsoft Graph and Entra documentation are both very comprehensive and provide a lot of information - but they often contain no examples or no working examples. In addition, the SDKs are either not, insufficiently or incorrectly documented.

The power of Aggressive Inlining in .NET and C#

If you browse through certain libraries or the .NET Runtime from time to time, you will notice that the attribute MethodImplOptions.AggressiveInlining can be found in some places - but what is this actually?

Replace FluentAssertions with AI

New year - new .NET drama. You would have thought that positive lessons had been learned from the last Moq drama; but we were proven wrong.

Advanced Usage of MSSQL Indexed Views in EF Core

In the world of Microsoft SQL Server , views are a powerful tool for simplifying complex data queries. Simple views offer no real performance gain but are often used to implement simple database queries (I still would prefer App implementations over Database implementations for simple views). But indexed views offer a real performance gain.

Increase Command Timeout for EF Core Migration Bundles

EF Core Migration Bundles are standalone executable files that contain one or more Entity Framework Core migrations and can be applied directly to a database. They are particularly useful for deploying migrations independently of the source code or development environment, e.g. in production environments.
Using migration bundles simplifies the deployment process as no additional software or configuration is required to perform the migrations. In CI/CD systems like Azure DevOps in particular, they can be executed across all platforms on all operating systems and therefore offer a flexible alternative to DACPAC deployments , which are often dependent on Windows tooling.

Create a custom proxy endpoint action with ASP.NET Core MVC

There are various reasons why it is useful to channel certain requests through your own application to an external endpoint; the most obvious is, for example, as a workaround for client statistics from browser adblockers like Microsoft Clarity or Cloudflare Web Analytics.

Load Google Search Crawler IP Address Ranges with Refit

Rate Limit is a great tool to protect your own website and content from misuse; in some cases, however, rate limiting is also bad: for example, if you want your own content to be indexed by Google Search in order to increase your own visibility.

Replace and remove whitespaces in strings - performant and sustainable

There are many ways to remove spaces or other characters in a string - there are just very big differences in terms of performance and efficiency.

Auto Format your Code on save with Visual Studio

Code formatting is a very important element when developers work together on a project - and you are always well advised not to invent your own formatting rules, but to use those that are a standard or de facto standard in the respective programming language.
In C#, many rules are now controlled via the editorconfig , but there is still a lack of standardized formatting tools in .NET - dotnet format simply does not support many things - so that different functionalities exist in different IDEs (Visual Studio , Visual Studio Code, Rider).

Sustainable Code with .NET 9

Sustainable Code is a constantly growing GitHub repository created by me , in which I collect various everyday code snippets and measure the performance of the different implementation ways.
The goal is to create a collection of code that virtually everyone has in front of them every day and can thus easily implement the best way for themselves and their use case.

Use ServiceCollection in Unit Tests with .NET

A popular unit test - and also a necessary test - is the correct registration of interfaces and their implementation with dependency injection. And a common mistake is that the associated IServiceCollection interface is used for mocks that lead to faulty tests.

How to process ZIP Files from a Stream in .NET

When working with ZIP files in .NET, there may be cases where the file is not stored on disk but comes directly as a Stream. This could happen if you’re downloading the ZIP file from a network, receiving it via an API, or working with in-memory file data. In this blog post, I’ll show you a simple example of handling ZIP files using streams in .NET and how to process their content without saving the ZIP to disk.

Decompress a ZIP archive with .NET

Working with compressed files is common in many applications, whether you’re extracting data from an archive, installing software packages, or retrieving bundled files. Thankfully, .NET finally provides an efficient, straightforward way to decompress ZIP files using the System.IO.Compression namespace. In this post, I’ll walk through a simple code snippet that you can use to decompress ZIP files in your .NET apps.

Compress a folder of files to a ZIP archive with .NET

When working with .NET apps you may sometimes need to bundle multiple files into a single compressed archive for easier storage, transfer, or processing. In this post, I’ll show you a simple and effective way to compress a folder into a .zip file using just a few lines of code with the built-in .NET namespace System.IO.Compression .

Read cpu load on Windows with .NET

In C# (.NET 6 and above), there is now a very simple way to read out the CPU load with minimal overhead - i.e. without threads. The PerformanceCounter from the System.Diagnostics namespace helps us with this.

.NET: the cost of returning an empty collection

Dealing with empty lists is an everyday situation in .NET. An empty list is often preferred to a null in order to control the logic. But how expensive is it to return an empty list?

.NET: use a preview version in your global.json

We are currently in the preview phase of .NET 9 , which releases in Nov 2024 - and if you want to test it extensively like I do, store the preview version in the global configuration global.json . But how do you have to define the version here for it to work?

Efficiently clean a string with .NET

Strings are one of the most commonly used types in .NET applications - and very often the source of inefficient code. For example, cleaning up a string - such as removing invalid or non-visible characters - is one of the most common use cases for user input. Unfortunately, the most convenient, but not the most efficient, implementation imaginable is used in this case: Linq.

Refit .NET - my personal caller best practise

Refit is an open-source library for .NET developers that simplifies the process of making HTTP API calls. It allows developers to define a set of interfaces that describe the API endpoints they want to interact with, and then Refit automatically generates the necessary code to make the HTTP requests. This can significantly reduce boilerplate code and make the interaction with web APIs more type-safe and maintainable.

Strong Name Sign .NET Assemblies via SNK

Strong Name Signing is a mechanism in .NET development that ensures the integrity and authenticity of assemblies. It is based on a public-private key procedure.
Contrary to what many assume, this is not a security mechanism, but a mechanism to ensure the uniqueness of the identity. It is therefore also recommended to store both private and public keys directly in the repository - and not to hide them; especially not in open source projects.

Handle Yaml Files with .NET

YAML files are unfortunately part of everyday life for all developers these days; and although they are very error-prone and almost impossible to edit without an IDE and schema information without constantly running into errors - many greetings to all CI systems that think this was a good idea: it wasn’t - we have to accept that we have to process them.

Welcome to the new Visual Studio SLNX Solution File

For many years, there has been a lot of criticism of Visual Studio’s current solution format. It is very difficult to read, it does not follow any standard and you need your own parser. Changes are virtually only possible with Visual Studio - and there are constant merge problems.

Enable NuGet Audit for better DevSecOps in .NET

Auditing is becoming increasingly important in the everyday life of a developer; however, until now there was no particularly good way in .NET - even the lock file still has its deficiencies. You had to rely on third-party packages in order to carry out real auditing of your packages and references or use security software such as WhiteSource or Snyk.

ASP.NET Core Form protection with Cloudflare's Turnstile

TLDR;

You can see the full sample in my GitHub repository BEN ABT Samples - ASP.NET Core Form protection with Cloudflare’s Turnstile

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Use GitHub Copilot Chat in Visual Studio to solve the .NET Moq drama and migrate to NSubstitute

It’s now been a few months since the GDPR-drama and data-harvesting around Moq (Stop using Moq as a guinea pig to get feedback on and develop SponsorLink ) happened - and the only conclusion that remains is: please migrate away from Moq, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

.NET Event Counters

.NET event counters are a relatively new API for collecting metrics from .NET applications. They are part of the EventSource and EventCounter namespace since .NET (Core) 3.0.

Top 5 Git Commit Message Best Practises in 2024

When you join a project as a new developer, you see one thing above all: no standards for Git commit messages. Some put emojis in the message, others write in the present tense, others in the past tense. But which top 5 rules for Git commit messages have actually become established in the open source community?

Custom Azure Application Insights Telemetry Metrics with .NET

By default, Azure Application Insights comes with necessary and important telemetry capabilities to monitor the basic functions of an application and collect telemetry.

Azure Communication Service - .NET Client with ConnectionString

The Azure Communication Service is a fairly new but already popular service for sending emails at scale. In this article, I would like to show you how you can use the service via a connection string in your .NET project.

Azure Communication Service - .NET Client with Managed Identity

The Azure Communication Service is a fairly new but already popular service for sending emails at scale. In this article, I would like to show you how you can use the service via a Azure Managed Identity in your .NET project.

Header and Footer Layouts with Handlebars.NET

One of the last blog posts (Text and EMail Templates with Handlebars.NET ) was generally about HandleBars.NET - a very popular template engine. This post is about how you can easily implement layouts with Handlebars.

.NET Naming Best Practises: API Models

API models are one of the elements where I personally see the most naming errors - which have a massive impact on the architect and cause subsequent errors. The solution is very simple: follow the naming rules!

.NET Naming Best Practises: Services vs. Providers

In many code bases there are Services and Providers - and often they do the same thing structurally; but what is the idea of a Service- and Provider-Classes?

.NET Naming Best Practises: Database Entities

Database entities are the objects that represent the tables in your database. They are the objects that you use to read and write the database.

.NET Naming Best Practises: DTOs

Often seen, often used incorrectly: DTOs. Data Transfer Objects.

In principle, DTO is an umbrella term, a design pattern that is used to transfer data between. In reality, however, the umbrella term is used directly as an implementation, which has disadvantages in all cases.

Text and EMail Templates with Handlebars.NET

A frequent requirement in apps is the conversion of templates, e.g. for sending e-mails, for PDF templates or other text modules. There are many different ways to do this, ranging from simple string replacements to the Razor engine of ASP.NET Core.

Create QR Codes with .NET

QR codes are a simple and very popular way of exchanging data and information - even in .NET. They have become part of everyday life.

Deploy ASP.NET Core via Zip Deployment to Azure Web App

There are various ways to deploy an application, but Zip deployment is the variant that is recommended the most - regardless of whether you are using Azure, AWS or other cloud and hosting providers.

New Data Annotation attributes with .NET 8

With .NET 8, the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations Namespace has been revised and some new attributes have been added that have been requested by the community for some time and have only been implemented through custom implementations.

The well-structured Entity in EF Core

A database entity represents an identifiable entry, often also things from the real world, which are to be stored and managed in the database. The purpose of database entities is to provide a structured and efficient implementation for organizing and managing information. By identifying entities, defining attributes and establishing relationships, a coherent and meaningful structure is created that allows data to be stored, retrieved and updated effectively. This facilitates data management and analysis in applications and systems.

When to use optional arguments and parameter defaults in c#

In C#, optional arguments are parameters in a method that have default values specified in the method’s declaration. This means that when you call the method, you can omit values for these optional parameters, and the method will use the default values defined in its signature. Optional arguments were introduced in C# 4.0 to make it more convenient to work with methods that have a large number of parameters with sensible default values.

.NET 8 makes you faster. Everyday.

As has been the case for many releases, the .NET 8 team is spending a lot of development effort to improve the .NET Runtime in terms of performance. Because fast performance means one thing above all: low energy consumption and high scalability.

Convert UnixTime to DateTimeOffset with a custom System.Text.Json Converter

Some APIs do not follow standards, ignore ISO8601 and return UnixTime. This is not nice, but can be easily fixed with a custom converter for System.Text.Json.

Accelerate your .NET build with Visual Studio 2022

A little more than three months ago, Microsoft integrated a new functionality into Visual Studio 2022: Build Acceleration .

This mechanism, which can be optionally activated, apparently ensures that build times for .NET projects can be reduced by up to 80%. This is, of course, an announcement that I wanted to take a closer look at.

Re-use EF Core Expressions to avoid redundant queries

I often see snippets in EF Core code reviews such as the following:

1dbContext.Users.Where( user => user.Id == id );

The query filter user => user.Id == id is contained directly in the Where - often not just in one place but sometimes in dozens of places. Here I ask myself: why is this not simply outsourced to a central place? It’s so simple!

Easy InMemory Unit Tests with EFCore and Sqlite

Unit testing is a type of software testing that is performed on the smallest unit of a software application, called a “unit”. A unit can be a function, method or module that is tested in isolation from other parts of the code.

Better Code with custom Strong-Id Types

In many software architectures the problem exists that there are methods, which are specified a multiplicity of type-same parameters, whose meaning is however fundamentally different. In principle, this includes all handling of Ids or other essential values that have a logical meaning.

Value Converters in EFCore

In the field of software development, data transformation plays a key role in ensuring that information flows seamlessly between different components and systems. When using Entity Framework (EF Core) , a powerful object-relational mapping (ORM) framework, developers can take advantage of value converters to simplify the process of converting data types between applications and databases. . This blog post explains the concept of value converters in EF Core, their benefits, and how to effectively use them in your projects.

Simplify string formatting with SmartFormat.NET

String formatting is a common task in software development and allows you to create dynamic and informative output. Traditional approaches such as string concatenation and compound formatting are widely used, but they quickly become unwieldy and error-prone when formatting requirements become more complex. This is where SmartFormat.NET comes in, a powerful and flexible string formatting library that simplifies the process and offers advanced functionality. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at SmartFormat.NET and how it can improve your string formatting needs.

Neuerungen in .NET 8

Noch ein halbes Jahr bis zum Release von .NET 8 - Zeit sich anzuschauen, was wir neues erwarten dürfen.

LTS Release

.NET 8 ist erneut ein LTS-Release; wie alle geraden Versionsbezeichner. Das bedeutet:

Detect Windows 10 and Windows 11 with .NET

Version numbers have always been a rather weird maintained matter under Windows; however, it became particularly bad with Windows 10, respectively 11. Actually, Windows 10 was supposed to be the last version number - but as most people correctly assumed, this has changed as we know.

Efficient deserialization of Json files on Azure Blob Storage with .NET

System.Text.Json is currently the most modern way to handle Json files efficiently. Efficiency here also means that memory sparing files are read in.

Microsoft has moved Teams backend service to .NET 6 - the performance results

September last year, Microsoft announced that a large number of backend services would be migrated to .NET 6. This, they said, was an enterprise-wide initiative .

A struct with an interface is inefficient in .NET

Structs have their advantages in .NET: they are especially efficient in the runtime if used correctly.

But if you use structs with an interface, the massive advantages unfortunately turn into disadvantages:
As soon as an interface is attached to a struct, Boxing comes into effect; the values are thus copied over and over again, which is usually not what you want - but it also shows up in the benchmarks.

Difference of is null vs equals null and why is null is recommended

Both C# is null and == null are used to check if a variable or object is null, but they work slightly differently.

Create Symbolic Links on Windows with .NET

Symbolic Links (often abbreviated as symlinks) are a type of file or folder shortcut in Windows that reference another file or folder in the file system, rather than copying its contents. Unlike a normal shortcut, a symlink acts as if it were the original file or folder, so any changes to the symlink will affect the original file, and vice versa.

Benefits of using isolated mode of Azure Functions with .NET

The isolated mode of Azure Functions with .NET allows for greater control over the runtime environment and dependencies of the function. In this mode, the function runs in its own process, separate from the Azure Functions host. This allows for custom runtime versions and specific versions of dependencies to be used.

Multi Query Selects with EF Core

Often there is a situation where you need to load several pieces of information from a database or table at the same time in order to display certain content. The prime example of such a situation is paging:

Statische Methoden in C# / .NET

Statische Methoden in C# sind Methoden, die auf eine Klasse und nicht auf eine bestimmte Instanz einer Klasse angewendet werden. Sie können aufgerufen werden, ohne dass zuvor eine Instanz der Klasse erstellt wurde. Ein Beispiel für eine statische Methode ist die Math.Sqrt() Methode, die die Quadratwurzel einer Zahl berechnet.

What is .NET and what is the difference to C#?

.NET and C# (CSharp ) are two closely related technologies, but they are not the same thing. Understanding the difference between the two can be confusing, especially for those new to programming. Here’s a quick breakdown of what each technology is and how they relate to one another.

Difference between Add and AddAsync in EF Core

Using Add or AddAsync in Entity Framework Core can be a little confusing, especially for those new to working with databases and ORMs (Object-Relational Mappers). In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the difference between Add and AddAsync, and when you might want to use one over the other.

Test your .NET exceptions with FluentAssertions

Testing exceptions in your code is an important part of ensuring that your code is robust and behaves correctly under various scenarios. One way to test exceptions in .NET is by using the FluentAssertions lib.

Get Process Id by Name or Path with .NET

Getting the process ID by the name or path of a process can be useful for a variety of reasons, such as being able to kill a hanging process or checking if a specific process is running on a machine. In this blog post, I’ll explore how to do this using .NET.

Avoid Caching with MemoryCache and GetOrCreate in .NET

GetOrCreate or its asynchronous counterpart GetOrCreateAsync is an extension method to create a cache entry if it does not exist yet.

Validate Configuration Options with ASP.NET Core

Configuring an ASP.NET Core application can be done in a variety of ways, including using command-line arguments, environment variables, and JSON files. One way to ensure that the options you have configured for your application are valid is to use the IOptions interface functionality, which provides a way to inject strongly-typed options into your application’s services.

What is a NullReferenceException in .NET and how can it be avoided?

A NullReferenceException is a common error that occurs in .NET applications when a null reference is accessed as if it were an object. This can happen when you attemp to call a method or access a property of a reference type variable that is null, or when a null reference is passed as an argument to a method that expects a non-null object.

Create a Fulltext Catalog with EF Core .NET Migrations for MSSQL

A full-text catalog in Microsoft SQL Server is a specialized storage that is used to store and manage full-text indexes for one or more tables in a database. A full-text index is a special type of index that is used to support fast, full-text searches of large amounts of text data. It enables users to search for words and phrases within a column of text data in a table, and returns rows that contain the search criteria. Full-text indexes can be created on columns of data that are stored in character data types, such as char, varchar, and text.

Compile Linq Expressions to increase performance

Expressions are now an absolute part of a developer’s everyday life in .NET thanks to Linq.

However, due to their nature, expressions are not one of the very best performing tools, which is why the .NET team is also doing a lot to improve general performance while maintaining usability.

DateTime vs. DateTimeOffset - UtcNow vs. Now

.NET has two principal ways for handling times: DateTime and DateTimeOffset .

The big deficit of DateTime, which was also recognized early in .NET 1.0, is that it is not clear from the DateTime information which time zone the time information represents. Therefore DateTime is also called implicit representation of time information, whose “hope” is that the time information is always in relation to UTC-0. DateTime cannot guarantee this, which is why errors often occur in combination with time zones and DateTime. DateTime supports only two possibilities at this point: the local time of the application or UTC.

Microsoft is moving backend services to .NET 6

Microsoft has announced in an impressive blog post on the .NET DevBlogs that they have started an enterprise-wide migration to migrate backend services.

Health Check Ping with EF Core and MSSQL

Sometimes it is quite useful to be able to send a query to the MSSQL server independently of its schema; for example to check if the server is principally reachable and the connection information as well as the credentials are correct.

Why you should no longer use var in C#

Beginning with C# 3, variables that are declared at method scope can have an implicit “type” var. An implicitly typed local variable is strongly typed just as if you had declared the type yourself, but the compiler determines the type.

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Parse HTML with .NET and the HtmlAgilityPack

Parsing HTML with .NET can be a useful skill for any developer working on web applications or data analysis projects. One tool that can be particularly helpful in these scenarios is HtmlAgilityPack , an open-source HTML parser library for .NET. In this blog post, we’ll go over how to use HtmlAgilityPack to parse HTML and extract data from it in a .NET application.

Use ASP.NET Core Options with an instance

ASP.NET Core provides a built-in mechanism for configuring an application’s options using the Options pattern. This pattern allows you to define a class to represent the options you want to configure, and then bind those options to values from a variety of sources, such as configuration files, environment variables, or command-line arguments.

Write Json Files asynchronously with .NET

Writing JSON files asynchronously is a useful technique for improving the performance and scalability of your application. By using an asynchronous approach, you can write JSON data to a file without blocking the main thread, allowing your application to continue running smoothly and respond to user input.

Write XML Files asynchronously with .NET

Writing XML files asynchronously is a useful technique for improving the performance and scalability of your application. By using an asynchronous approach, you can write XML data to a file without blocking the main thread, allowing your application to continue running smoothly and respond to user input.

ActivityPub Protocol

ActivityPub is an open, decentralized social networking protocol that allows users to share content and interact with each other across the internet. It is based on the concept of the Activity Stream, which is a standard format for representing activities or events that happen on a social networking site.

List local Windows Administator names with .NET

First, you need to install the NuGet Package System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement

Now you can open a context and get all members of the built-in group “Administrators”

.NET Updates März 2022

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von März 2022 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• Fix CVE-2020-8927: .NET Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
• Fix CVE-2022-24464: .NET Denial of Service Vulnerability
• Fix CVE-2022-24512: .NET Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

.NET March 2022 Updates – .NET 6.0.3, .NET 5.0.15 and .NET 3.1.23

20th Year! Happy Birthday .NET!

20 years ago today .NET was released!

Congratulations - you are the best ecosystem!

.NET Updates Februar 2022

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von Februar 2022 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• Fix CVE-2022-21986: .NET Denial of Service Vulnerability
• .NET 5.0 End of life: .NET 5 ist kein LTS-Update, weshalb der Support bereits am 8. Mai 2022 ausläuft und auf .NET 6 aktualisiert werden sollte!

.NET February 2022 Updates – 6.0.2 and 5.0.14

Die .NET UI Technologieübersicht 2022

Windows Forms aka WinForms

Windows Forms ist eine sehr stark veraltete Technologie, die Aufgrund ihrer Einfachheit jedoch immer noch sehr beliebt ist. WinForms besitzt einen sehr dünnen Layer, der direkt die Win32 API ansteuert, die wiederum GDI+ verwendet.

.NET Updates Dezember 2021

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von Dezember 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• Fix CVE-2021-43877: ASP.NET Core Information Disclosure Vulnerability
• Deployment Update: Updates kommen nun auch über Windows!

.NET December 2021 Updates – 6.0.1, 5.0.13 and 3.1.22

ThrowAwayLogger: easy log mocking in .NET

In the past we always had often problems to manage logging mechanisms in unit tests, so I wrote ThrowAwayLogger that solves the problem.

Check for .NET NuGet Updates via dotnet outdated cli tool

.NET now has a very powerful CLI that can also handle NuGet packages very well. But one important feature is missing: check if there are package updates.

DateTime vs DateTimeOffset - der richtige Umgang mit Zeiten in .NET

Dieser Artikel behandelt den korrekten Umgang sowie Best Practises und Empfehlungen von Datums- und Zeitinformationen, Zeitzonen und Betriebssystem-Eigenheiten in Anwendungen, in Text-Dateien, Datenbanken und APIs. Alle Empfehlungen stammen aus dem Open Source-Bereich bzw. stellen eine Zusammenfassung aus der Microsoft Dokumentation dar, zB. .NET: Die Wahl zwischen “DateTime”, “DateTimeOffset”, “TimeSpan” und “TimeZoneInfo”

.NET Updates November 2021

Gestern hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von November 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

Dieses Update enthält nur die aktualisierten Laufzeitumgebungen.

.NET Updates Oktober 2021

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von Oktober 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• Fix CVE-2021-41355 | .NET Core Information Disclosure Vulnerability

.NET October 2021 Updates – 5.0.11 and 3.1.20

Copy text into the Windows Clipboard with .NET

To copy text to the clipboard with .NET Framework, usually you have used .NET wrapper of Windows Forms:

1System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard.SetText

However, in the new .NET world, where we want to support many operating systems, this wrapper is rather a hindrance. Thank goodness someone took the trouble and created a very nice, stable library: .NET CopyText on GitHub

Bad Gateway error on App Service deployment

Our deployment ran smooth for weeks. But suddenly and without warning and only for one app, the “Bad Gateway” error appeared when deploying Azure DevOps to Azure App Service.

Class vs. Struct performance in .NET

In addition to classes that represent reference types, there are also structs that represent value types.

But how do the two different structures behave in terms of performance, and when can a class or a struct be used at all?

.NET Updates September 2021

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von September 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• OS Lifecycle update: Aktualisierung der Docker Container

.NET September 2021 Updates – 5.0.10 and 3.1.19

AssemblyMetadata - Build Time with Source Code Generators

.NET has for some time source code generators : a mechanism with which it is possible to generate source code at compile time, as has been known, for example, with DSL approaches since ~2005.

.NET Updates August 2021

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von August 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• Fix CVE-2021-34485: .NET Core Information Disclosure Vulnerability
• Fix CVE-2021-26423: .NET Core Denial of Service Vulnerability
• Fix CVE-2021-34532: ASP.NET Core Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Hinweis: in diesen Blog Post hat Microsoft auch erneut .NET Core 2.1 End of life erwähnt!

.NET Updates Juli 2021

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von Juli 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• Windows Arm64

.NET July 2021 Updates – 5.0.8 and 3.1.17

Parse HTTP User Agents with ASP.NET Core

In my last blog post I shared why we wrote our own user agent parser (mycsharp/HttpUserAgentParser ) in .NET (reason: performance).

.NET Updates Juni 2021

Gestern hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von Juni 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• CVE-2021-31957: ASP.NET Denial of Service Vulnerability Fix

.NET June 2021 Updates – 5.0.7 and 3.1.16

Fast Parsing HTTP User Agents with .NET

While analyzing nearly 120 million requests, we noticed that one thing was dragging down our performance: parsing user agents for detecting bots and search engines.

Plugin Mechanism with Parts in ASP.NET Core

A plugin-like mechanism is already built into ASP.NET Core, and is called Parts or Application Parts .

In principle, it is a discovery mechanism to be able to use Razor or MVC components such as controllers from other assemblies, for example. Therefore, Application Parts are also particularly well suited for Domain Driven Design (DDD) separation of application components in ASP.NET Core. A DDD abstraction is the most used way of these Application Parts in my applications and architectures.

.NET Updates Mai 2021

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von Mai 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• OS Lifecycle update
• Behavioral change in Asp.Net 2.1 Installers

.NET May 2021 Updates – 5.0.6, 3.1.15, 2.1.28

.NET Updates April 2021

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von April 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht. Diesmal wurden vor allem die Abhängigkeiten wie Docker Images aktualisiert, aber auch ein NuGet Fix bzgl. Zertifikaten ausgeliefert.

OpenTelemetry .NET 1.0 veröffentlicht!

Gestern hat Microsoft die erste stabile Version 1.0 von OpenTelemetry .NET veröffentlicht.

Was ist OpenTelemtry?

OpenTelemetry ist eine Initiative der CNFN (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) und dient dazu, dass Anbieter- und Technologie-übergreifend Informationen von Applikationen zur Verfügung gestellt und ausgewertet werden können.

.NET 6 Preview released

Microsoft hat gestern die erste Preview für .NET 6 veröffentlicht, das im November 2021 als stabile Version kommen wird.

Anbei die aus meinen Augen wichtigsten Punkte:

Die Roadmap für Azure Functions mit .NET 5 und .NET 6

Gestern wurde von Anthony Chu die Roadmap für Azure Functions mit .NET 5 und .NET 6 vorgestellt. Die wichtigsten Punkte will ich kurz zusammen fassen:

.NET Updates März 2021

Gestern hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von März 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• CVE Security Update
• Neue Visual Studio Version
• Lifecycle Updates
• Blazor Template Updates

.NET March 2021 Updates – 5.0.4, 3.1.13, 2.1.26

.NET Updates Februar 2021

Gestern hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von Februar 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• CVE Security Update
• Neue Visual Studio Version
• Lifecycle Updates

.NET February 2021 Updates – 5.0.3, 3.1.12, 2.1.25

Loggen eigener Werte mit Azure Application Insights

Um eigene Werte in Application Insights loggen zu können, muss ein eigener ITelemetryInitializer erzeugt werden. Dieser dient nun dazu, dass der entsprechende Log-Kontext um Informationen angereichert werden können:

Loggen des User Agent mit Azure Application Insights

Standardmäßig wird der User-Agent des HTTP-Requests nicht von der Application Insights Middleware des ASP.NET SDKs gespeichert; vermutlich aufgrund der sehr strengen Implementierungsart der DSGVO-Vorgaben von Microsoft.

Azure Active Directory nun auf .NET Core!

Azure Active Directory gehört zu den größten Anwendungen im Azure Ökosystem und vermutlich zu einer der größten Anwendungen der Welt.

.NET Updates Januar 2021

Gestern hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von Januar 2021 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• CVE Security Update
• Neue Visual Studio Version
• .NET Core 2.1 End of Life Hinweise

.NET January 2021 Updates – 5.0.2, 3.1.11, 2.1.24

Loggen des Referers mit Azure Application Insights

Standardmäßig wird der Referer, also die Quelle des Aurufs des HTTP-Requests, nicht von der Application Insights Middleware des ASP.NET SDKs gespeichert. Um dies dennoch im Log zu hinterlegen, muss ein eigener ITelemetryInitializer geschrieben werden.

.NET Updates Dezember 2020

Gestern hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von Dezember 2020 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

Diesmal gehört dazu maßgeblich das .NET Update 5.0.1, das die ersten kleinen Kinderkrankheiten von .NET 5 beseitigen soll.

.NET Updates kommen mit dem Windows Update!

Microsoft hat am Donnerstag den zahlreichen Wunsch erfüllt und angekündigt, dass .NET Runtime Updates auf den Windows-Client Versionen ab diesen Dezember mit dem Windows Update ausgeliefert werden und nicht mehr manuell heruntergeladen werden müssen!

.NET Updates November 2020

Heute hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von November 2020 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• Neue Visual Studio Version
• Neue Docker Images

.NET Core November 2020 Updates – 3.1.10

Versenden von E-Mails mit DKIM mit .NET und MailKit

Wer heute automatisierte E-Mails versenden will, die nicht unbedingt in jedem Spam-Filter hängen bleiben sollen, der kommt kaum an DKIM vorbei.

Flexibler und einfacher E-Mail Versand mit Mimekit in .NET

Die .NET MailMessage Klasse existiert bereits seit .NET 2.0 und hat entsprechend einen historischen Rucksack mit sich zu tragen. Die letzten Jahre haben - insbesondere aufgrund der Spam-Prävention - die Anforderungen an sichere E-Mails immer mehr erhöht, die die MailMessage-Klasse einfach nicht mehr abdecken kann; auch aus Kompatibilitätsgründen.

.NET 5 erhält Performance-Boost auf Raspberry und der ARM64-Familie

ARM64 basierte CPUs werden immer beliebter und verbreiten sich auch im Consumer-Umfeld - nicht zuletzt durch den Raspberry, der zwar primär im ARM32-Modus betrieben wird jedoch auch seit PiV2 auf ARM64 versteht.

.NET Updates September 2020

Gestern hat Microsoft die .NET Updates von September 2020 auf ihrem Blogpost veröffentlicht.

• CVE Security Update
• Neue Visual Studio Version
• Neue Docker Images

.NET Core September 2020 Updates – 2.1.22 and 3.1.8

C# 9 - Was gibt's Neues?

Noch fünf Monate, dann erscheint C# 9 - doch was gibt es eigentlich alles Neues? Und für wen sind all die Neuerungen gedacht?

Microsoft Build 2020 - Neues für .NET Entwickler

Am heutigen Dienstag um 17 Uhr deutscher Zeit startete die Microsoft Build - dieses Jahr als kostenloser Online-Event statt einem kostenpflichtigen On-Site Event, meist in Downtown Seattle.

Build and Test .NET Core with GitHub Actions

What is GitHub Actions?

GitHub Actions is the counterpart to Azure DevOps Pipelines: a fully configurable automation tool for setting up workflows, such as building, testing and publishing software and applications.

Use hCaptcha with dotnet and ASP.NET Core

Many websites protect themselves from automated access with reCaptcha, a Google company.

The top dog can be found on almost every website.

Was erwartet uns mit ASP.NET Core 5?

Nachdem Microsoft nun die erste Preview von .NET 5 veröffentlicht hat stellt sich die Frage: was kommt eigentlich mit ASP.NET Core 5?

.NET 5 Preview 1 veröffentlicht

Microsoft hat heute in einem Blog Post bekannt gegeben, dass nun die erste Preview für .NET 5 als SDK zur Verfügung steht. Vor einigen Tagen war schon das erste Docker Image auf dem Microsoft .NET Docker Hub aufgetaucht.

Wie schütze ich das Ökosystem meines Projekts?

Kaum ein wirkliches Projekt - sei es im Bereich von .NET, Angular, Node, Java oder anderen Sprachen - kommen heutzutage ohne externe Abhängigkeiten aus.

Enforce english documentations on Microsoft Docs

Microsoft translates the texts of its documentations by machines - and often this unfortunately still ends in total gibberish.

But especially for developer documentations an understandable way of technical expression is very important - which is why many developers from all over the world simply want to read the English documentation instead of a bad local translation.

Format DateTime to ISO 8601

ISO 8601 is a general, international standard on how the complex representation of time stamps can be formulated in a general way - including the consideration of time formats, time zones and resolution.
Therefore, ISO 8601 is generally recommended for the exchange of time information, whether in databases, XML files or any other potential technology-neutral exchange format.

Clone entity values with Entity Framework

Often you want to duplicate entities or their values in order to save an entity with a new ID. But what is the best way to do this?

Expose OpenSearch Endpoint with an ASP.NET Core Controller Action

OpenSearch

OpenSearch is a standard that has existed for about 15 years and is used by search engines and Browsers.

Entity Framework 3 - Migrations

Install EF Core 3 Migration tools

The tooling of the Entity Framework Core Migrations comes via NuGet (and dotnet tooling).

Custom PasswordHasher in ASP.NET Core Identity

In the ASP.NET Core Identity environment, the PasswordHasher is responsible for securely storing the password and performing password entry checks.

In this respect, the PasswordHasher is also responsible for choosing the correct hash method, whereby several hash methods can be used.

Unit Testing with Entity Framework Core 3

This post covers the basic structure for unit tests with Entity Framework Core.

Note: Unit tests are only there to test the respective logic. Unit tests do not replace integration tests, especially for database operations.

Read Blog Post

Custom Model Binders in ASP.NET Core

What are Model Binders?

ModelBinders are required in ASP.NET Core to pass parameters from HTTP requests into a controller action method.

Use SignalR in MediatR Notifications

SignalR is a wonderful, easy and fast way to provide users with push messages - and is also built into ASP.NET Core 3.
In this short code sample I show you how to inform a client about SignalR based on MediatR notifications.

Read System Properties like CPU Temperatures with .NET Core

Through a forum post I discovered the NuGet package OpenHardwareMonitorLibCore , and wanted to test it.

Apparently this is a wrapper of a very popular tool (https://openhardwaremonitor.org/) , with whose help you can read out all kinds of system properties. This includes the CPU and its sensors.

Using ASP.NET Core 3 in .NET libraries

With the release of ASP.NET Core 3, Microsoft has also changed the way how to use and reference ASP.NET Core dependencies. In the past you could use NuGet to find the ASP.NET Core packages you needed.

Azure IoT: send messages with C#

Requirements

• You must have created an IoT Hub in Azure.
• You must have created a device in your created Azure IoT Hub .
• You need the connection string your IoT Hub device (IoT Hub -> Devices -> Select Device -> Configurations)

NuGet

To use the DeviceClient , which opens the connection to your Azure IoT Hub , you need the NuGet package Microsoft.Azure.Devices.Client

Fast SQL-Insert with C# and SqlBulkCopy

In .NET, there is a very fast and easy way to pump a variety of entities into an SQL database: SqlBulkCopy

Load an image into a byte-array with C#

This pretty simply snippet exports your Image into a byte-array.

1public static byte[] ToByteArray(this System.Drawing.Image image)
2{
3    using(MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
4    {
5        image.Save(memoryStream);
6        return memoryStream.ToArray();
7    }
8}

Usage:

1System.Drawing.Image myImage = .....
2
3byte[] imageAsByteArray = myImage.ToByteArray();

Hint: ImageSharp

ImageSharp uses the same signature to export bytes into a MemoryStream

Download a file with .NET

The most current and currently recommended way to download .NET Framework, .NET Standard or .NET Core files from the Internet is the HttpClient class.

Einfaches WCF-Beispiel ohne komplizierte Config

Unter anderem durch die Aktivität im myCSharp.de-Forum ist mir aufgefallen, dass viele Entwickler doch Probleme mit der Konfiguration von WCF-Diensten haben. Zugegeben; ich bin auch kein großer Fan des .NET-Konfigurationsframeworks. Es vereinfacht manches, aber es verkompliziert auch vieles, da unnötige Werte Verwirrung stiften.