Showing posts with label Nuget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nuget. Show all posts

Reading Notes #170

2015-01-15 19.08.05Suggestion of the week


Cloud

  • Data Pipeline Guidance (patterns & practices) - Interesting project using Azure Eventhub's best practices in an IoT context.

Programming


Podcast


Miscellaneous

  • Removing Distractions - Interesting post where the author share is experience while trying to be less connected.

~Frank B.


Reading Notes #169

 

Happy New Year!


freezing-rain-388933_640

 

Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous



~Frank Boucher


Reading Notes #168

poteauSuggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous


See you in 2015!


~Frank B


Stop losing time installing your software

Automation is the key to many hard situations. Everyone knows that, yet a lot of tasks are done manually. In this post, I will share with you some easy steps to install all your applications.

Blue Gears

Let's get started


For those how follow this blog I talked many times about Chocolatey. For all the others, Chocolatey is a Machine Package Manager, somewhat like apt-get (on Linux), but built with Windows in mind.
Assuming that you don't have Chocolatey installed, let's start by that. Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) as Administrator, and execute this command:
@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin
Now anytime you need an application you can simply do a choco install command. This will download the latest version of the package online the last package, and install it on your PC.
Here are some examples with popular applications:

Application Command
Notepad++ choco install notepadplusplus
Atom choco install atom
7-Zip choco install 7zip
Skype choco install skype

You can find the complete list of all applications on the Chocolatey web site. Many other commands are also available to search, list and update some packages:

Command Description
choco install atom -Version 0.140.0 Install old version (0.140.0) of Atom
choco list nunit Show all package that contain nUnit
choco update updates chocolatey to the latest version
choco update notepadplusplus updates NotePad++ to the latest version


Let's go a step further


Will it be nice if we could chain them? This is possible with Boxstarter, a repeatable, reboot resilient windows environment installations using Chocolatey packages. To install Fiddler, Atom, and Visual Studio 2013, simply type this command in Internet Explorer (IE) and Boxstarter will starts his magic.
http://boxstarter.org/package/fiddler4,atom,visualstudiocommunity2013


Note: This will work only in Internet Explorer (IE), on Chrome or Firefox you will need a "Click-Once" extension.



Turn it up to 11


Now that we know we can chain them, what is stooping us to create a script that will install ALL our favorite applications? Well, nothing!

Boxstarter is a very easy and powerful way to automate the installation of software. Here an example to show some of the great features supported by Boxstarter. In the following script I will: configure Windows, install the latest Windows updates, install Visual Studio Community 2013 with an extension and install many other applications.

# Windows Configuration
Update-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
Set-ExplorerOptions -showHidenFilesFoldersDrives -showProtectedOSFiles -showFileExtensions
Enable-RemoteDesktop
Disable-InternetExplorerESC
Disable-UAC #Win8
Set-TaskbarSmall

if (Test-PendingReboot) { Invoke-Reboot }

# Update Windows and reboot if necessary
Install-WindowsUpdate -AcceptEula
if (Test-PendingReboot) { Invoke-Reboot }

# Install Visual Studio Community 2013
choco install choco install visualstudiocommunity2013

# VS extensions
Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage PowerShellTools http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/c9eb3ba8-0c59-4944-9a62-6eee37294597/file/112013/6/PowerShellTools.vsix


# Install WebPI (Platform Installer) 
choco install webpi

# Install
#  . SSDT
#  . Microsoft Azure SDK - 2.4.1
#  . Microsoft Azure SDK for .NET (VS 2012) - 2.4
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer>WebpiCmd.exe /Applications: SSDT, WindowsAzureSDK_2_4_1, VWDOrVs2012AzurePack.2.4


if (Test-PendingReboot) { Invoke-Reboot }

# Install Favourite Tools
choco install sourcetree
choco install resharper
choco install Atom
choco install LinqPad
choco install fiddler4

You can now execute this script executing the command in IE:
http://boxstarter.org/package/url?C:/dev/Demoscript.txt 
In this case, the file was on a local folder, put it could have been in a share folder on another server, or somewhere online like in gist.github.com.

Wrapping up


I hope it will help you to automate repetitive task and save time. For more information about Chocolatey or Boxstarter, go visit their respective web site. Any comments, suggestions and/or questions are welcome.


~Frank B

Four Simple Tips to Improve your Asp.Net MVC Project

When it's time to do the re-factoring of a solution, it's always a good idea to clean the code before doing any re-factoring. In this post, I will share with you simple but very efficient ways to improve your solution.

1- Forget the magic string


By default in Asp.Net MVC magic strings are used every where.
return View("Index");
or
@Html.ActionLink("Delete Dinner", "Delete", "Dinners", new { id = Model.DinnerID }, null)

Nothing bad here, but nothing will tell you that to did a typo, or that the method name as changed. This is where T4MVC will become a great tool do add to all your project.

To add it a simple Nuget command is enough: Install-Package T4MVC. By doing this a T4 file (T4MVC.tt) will be added to your project that will generates a number of files. These generated files will simplify your life and gives you the opportunity to code using strongly type.

Here are few transformations:
// Before ----------------
  return View("Index");

// After with T4MVC
  return View(Views.Index);
An action link in a view.
// Before ----------------
  @Html.ActionLink("Delete Product", "Delete", "Products", new { id = Model.ProductID }, null)

// After with T4MVC
  @Html.ActionLink("Delete Product", MVC.Products.Delete(Model.ProductID))

An Ajax call.
// Before ----------------
<%= Ajax.ActionLink( "RSVP for this event",
                 "Register", "RSVP",
                 new { id=Model.DinnerID }, 
                 new AjaxOptions { UpdateTargetId="rsvpmsg", OnSuccess="AnimateRSVPMessage" }) %>

// After with T4MVC
<%= Ajax.ActionLink( "RSVP for this event",
                 MVC.RSVP.Register(Model.DinnerID),
                 new AjaxOptions { UpdateTargetId="rsvpmsg", OnSuccess="AnimateRSVPMessage" }) %>

A redirection.
// Before ----------------
return RedirectToAction("Details", new { id = product.ProductID });

// After with T4MVC
return RedirectToAction(MVC.Products.Details(product.ProductID));

When writing the code, it gives you intellisense where you normally would not have any. At compile time, it validates all the code so no typo or other misspelling errors are present.

2- Clean your views


You know all those "@using" on the top of each views that we copy over and over... It's time to remove them. The way to do it is by moving them to the web.config file in the "Views" folder.

web.config location

So you can move the namespaces used globally
@using Microsoft.Security.Application
@using System.Globalization;

by including them to this section:
<system.web.webPages.razor>
  <pages pageBaseType="System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage">
    <namespaces>
      <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc" />
      <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Ajax" />

      <add namespace="Microsoft.Security.Application" />
      <add namespace="System.Globalization" />

    </namespaces>
  </pages>
</system.web.webPages.razor>

3- Don't lose time debugging


To many people are losing time debugging their application or web site. Start using Glimpse right away! This will provide information in real time across all layers of your application from the UI to the server and database side. Perfect to know everything that happen on a click of a button: javascript validation, controller code and even the query in the database.







Install it in ten seconds with the Nuget command manager and pick the version you need.

PM> Install-Package Glimpse



Glimpse is secure and is configured to be accessible only from localhost by default. But don't trust me and try it by yourself, or go check this one minute Glimpse Heads Up Display youtube video.

4- Start monitoring your website health and usage


Move your website on Microsoft Azure and use the Application Insights. This will gives you the opportunity to monitor that availability, performance and usage of your live application.

Add Application Insights


To add it you got many possibilities, one of them from Visual Studio 2013, just right-click on the project and select Add Application Insights Telemetry, and voilà!

Now you just need to run or deploy the website and after few minutes or so you will have plenty of information, graphs waiting for you in the Azure Portal.



Informations



You will find a lot of information about Application Insights on the Microsoft Azure


Wrapping up

I hope it will help you, thanks for reading. Any comments, suggestions and/or questions are welcome.

~ Frank Boucher


References



Upgrade an Application Windows Azure OS Family

Recently I add to upgrade an web site running in Azure Webrole from Azure OS famille 1.6 to a more recent version. While the migration was not complicated I encounter some little particularity that I found could be interesting to share.

The Context

The website was a Visual Studio 2010 project using Azure SDK 1.6 and a library call AspNetProvider that was part of Microsoft's sample few years ago to manage session and membership. Using the AspNetProvider library the session was saved in Azure blob storage, and the membership was saved in an SQL database.

The Goal

The application must stay a Visual Studio 2010 project, but using the most-recent Azure SDK and Azure Storage Client as possible.

The Solution

  • Azure SDK 2.1
  • Azure.StorageClient 4.0
  • Universal Provider version 2.1
  • OS famille 4

The Journey


Migration from SDK 1.6 to SDK 2.1


Azure SDK version 2.1 is the higher version compatible with Visual Studio 2010. And can be downloaded from Microsoft's website. Once it is installed, just open the project in Visual Studio and right-click on the Azure Project. By clicking on the upgrade button the magic will happen. Some errors could stay but the hard work will be done for you.


Migration from AspNetProvider to UniversalProvider


we need to remove all reference to the AspNetProvider library. Just expand the resources node in the Solution Explorer and delete the reference. One thing important is that since we are using Visual Studio 2010 the latest version of the UniversalProvider we can use is 1.2. More recent version are using .Net 4.5 and this is not compatible with the present solution. To get the reference added to the project just execute the following Nugget command:
Install-Package UniversalProvider -version 1.2

Check the web.config file to clean the membership connections.

Migration of the Azure Storage Client


This one is the easiest, just remove the reference in the reference node and then execute the following Nugget Command:
Install-Package Azure.Storage.Client

Migration of the membership data


The AspNetProvider was using prefixed SQL tables: aspnet_user, aspnet_membership, etc. The new membership manager is using another sets of tables. We must migrate the data from one set to the other one. Here a SQL script that will to exactly that. The script can be run multiple times because it will only copie the unmoved data.
-- ========================================================
-- Description:    Migrate data from asp_* tables 
--                 to the new table used by Universal provider
-- ========================================================

DECLARE @CNT_NewTable AS INT
DECLARE @CNT_OldTable AS INT

-- --------------------------------------------------------
-- Applications -------------------------------------------

INSERT INTO dbo.Applications (ApplicationName, ApplicationId, Description)
    SELECT    n.ApplicationName, n.ApplicationId, n.Description 
    FROM    dbo.aspnet_Applications o 
    LEFT    JOIN dbo.Applications n ON o.ApplicationId = n.ApplicationId
    WHERE    n.ApplicationId IS NULL

SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.Applications 
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_Applications

PRINT 'Application Count: ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' = ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)

-- -------------------------------------------------------- 
-- Roles --------------------------------------------------

INSERT INTO dbo.Roles (ApplicationId, RoleId, RoleName, Description)
SELECT    o.ApplicationId, o.RoleId, o.RoleName, o.Description 
FROM    dbo.aspnet_Roles o
LEFT JOIN dbo.Roles n ON o.RoleId = n.RoleId
WHERE n.RoleId IS NULL

SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.Roles 
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_Roles

PRINT 'Roles Count : ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' = ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)

-- --------------------------------------------------------
-- Users --------------------------------------------------

INSERT INTO dbo.Users (ApplicationId, UserId, UserName, IsAnonymous, LastActivityDate)
SELECT o.ApplicationId, o.UserId, o.UserName, o.IsAnonymous, o.LastActivityDate 
FROM dbo.aspnet_Users o LEFT JOIN dbo.Users n ON o.UserId = n.UserID 
WHERE n.UserID IS NULL

SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.Users 
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_Users

PRINT 'Users count: ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' >= ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)

-- --------------------------------------------------------
-- Memberships --------------------------------------------

INSERT INTO dbo.Memberships (ApplicationId, UserId, Password, 
PasswordFormat, PasswordSalt, Email, PasswordQuestion, PasswordAnswer, 
IsApproved, IsLockedOut, CreateDate, LastLoginDate, LastPasswordChangedDate, 
LastLockoutDate, FailedPasswordAttemptCount, 
FailedPasswordAttemptWindowStart, FailedPasswordAnswerAttemptCount, 
FailedPasswordAnswerAttemptWindowsStart, Comment) 

SELECT o.ApplicationId, o.UserId, o.Password, 
o.PasswordFormat, o.PasswordSalt, o.Email, o.PasswordQuestion, o.PasswordAnswer, 
o.IsApproved, o.IsLockedOut, o.CreateDate, o.LastLoginDate, o.LastPasswordChangedDate, 
o.LastLockoutDate, o.FailedPasswordAttemptCount, 
o.FailedPasswordAttemptWindowStart, o.FailedPasswordAnswerAttemptCount, 
o.FailedPasswordAnswerAttemptWindowStart, o.Comment 
FROM dbo.aspnet_Membership o
LEFT JOIN Memberships n ON  o.ApplicationId = n.ApplicationId
                      AND o.UserId = n.UserId
WHERE n.UserId IS NULL AND n.ApplicationId IS NULL


SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.Memberships 
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_Membership

PRINT 'Memberships count: ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' >= ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)

-- -------------------------------------------------------
-- UsersInRoles ------------------------------------------
TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.UsersInRoles
INSERT INTO dbo.UsersInRoles SELECT * FROM dbo.aspnet_UsersInRoles


SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.UsersInRoles 
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_UsersInRoles

PRINT 'UsersInRoles count: ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' >= ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)


Migration from OSFamilly 1 to 4

Open the file .cscfg and edit the OS Family attribute. It's in the ServiceConfiguration node.
<ServiceConfiguration servicename="MyApp" osFamily="4" osVersion="*" ...>    


Wrapping up

The only step left is to deploy in the staging environment to see if everything is working as expected. would recommend also to plan to upgrade as soon as possible because the Azure SDK 2.1 official retirement date is November 2015. I hope this post could help you, even if you are migrating from and to a different version. Any comments, suggestions and/or questions are welcome.


~ Frank Boucher


Reading Notes #162

CloudBusSuggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous


~Frank Boucher


Reading Notes #158

ButtonsamplepngSuggestion of the week


Cloud

  • Designing for Big Scale in Azure (K. Dotchkoff) - Nice post that explains how we should change our design in the cloud and use logical container or scale units.

Programming

  • Building a Better NuGet (Edward Charbeneau) - Nice post that gives us the best practices when developing a NuGet package.

Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #155

CloudenFrancais_cover_400Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming

  • Git: It’s Just Data! - This post shows us Git from a database point of view. Julie also gives really good reference for tool and book.

Databes


Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #154

 

compare_iaas_paas_saasSuggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #148

Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous


Reading Notes #147

Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #141

Image from hubspot.comSuggestion of the week

  • Moving to Microsoft Azure (Filip Ekberg) - Another story about a blog migration on Azure. It's always interesting to learn what kind of trouble the people got while doing that.

Cloud


Programming


Mobile


Miscellaneous




Reading Notes #127

Suggestion of the week

Cloud

Programming

Databases

Integration

  • Streaming Xml Transformations (Christos Karras) - Great tutorial that explains very clearly what are our solutions when we are in front of a complex XML transformation.

Miscellaneous


Reading Notes #125

frozenfanceSuggestion of the week

Cloud

Programming

Architecture

Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #106

WP_20130908_002Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Databases


Programming


Integration


Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #93

Azure_SDK_2Suggestion of the week

 

Cloud

 

Programming

 

UX


Miscellaneous


~Frank




Reading Notes #92

CloudBroadcastSuggestion of the week

Cloud

Programming

UX

  • Magic Numbers in CSS - If you are doing web development this reading is a must. For all the other read it, you will learn important css base.
  • Stop Your Console App The Nice Way) (Mike Hadlow) - This post some best practice to do a better management of the console application. It's not because it's a console app that UX is not important.

Miscellaneous

~Frank