Reading Notes #614

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In this edition of Reading Notes, we delve into a diverse range of programming topics, from stream manipulation in C# to the latest updates in Docker Desktop. Whether you’re interested in adding AI to your .NET apps or understanding the implications of .NET 6 reaching end-of-support, we’ve got you covered. 


Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

Programming

Miscellaneous

~ Frank


Reading Notes #613

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Good Monday! This week Reading Notes are more listening notes 😅 and we go from .NET Aspire and  containers, passing by communication with AI to camping!

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

Cloud

Programming

Podcasts

~Frank

Reading Notes #612

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In this week’s Reading Notes, we explore cloud debugging, .NET Aspire, and more. Join us for insights, workshops, and podcasts covering a range of exciting topics! 🚀
 
Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.


 

Cloud

  • GalaSoft Laurent Bugnion (Laurent Bugnion) - Nice post debugging investigating a bug, that cannot be reproduce locally only in the cloud.... But with the right tools it's much easier.

Programming

Podcasts

Miscellaneous

  • What is platform engineering? (Julia Kulla-Mader, Chuck Lantz) - Platform engineering is gaining in popularity, but what ibis really. This article gives a good explanation to start our learning journey.

Reading Notes #611

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Reading Notes! In this roundup, we explore a variety of topics across cloud, programming, databases, and AI. From understanding Docker’s USER instruction to styling Blazor components with CSS, I’ve got you covered. Let’s dive in!


Suggestion of the week

  • Understanding the Docker USER Instruction (Jay Schmidt) - A great post to that explains really clearly the basic usage of user when building our container. After reading this post you should feel confident to follow this best practices.

Cloud

Programming

Databases

AI

~frank

Reading Notes #610

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Happy Canada Day!
It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Cloud

Programming

Databases

AI

~frank

Reading Notes #609

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It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

You also read something you liked? Share it!

   

Cloud

Programming

AI

~frank

Reading Notes #608

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It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 


You also read something you liked? Share it!

Cloud

Programming

AI

Podcast

Miscellaneous


~ Frank


Reading Notes #607

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It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Cloud

Programming

Databases

Podcasts


~frank


Reading Notes #606

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It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Cloud

Azure Developer CLI (azd) – Build 2024 Recap (Grace Kulin) - All developers should look at how it can really speedup and simplify your Azure deployment and ease the creation of your infrastructure as code file (bicep and terraform).

Programming

Catch Up on Microsoft Build 2024: Essential Sessions for .NET Developers (James Montemagno) - Perfect for . NET developers who would like to know what's new and what's coming

Avoiding interactivity with Blazor? (Jon Hilton) - Nice post that examines how some fancy checkbox or button interactivity works in Blazor.

Must-have resources for new .NET Aspire developers (Anthony Simmon) - This post contains a list of other posts and videos about aspired really interesting if you want to get started.

Microsoft Dev Box introduces new ready-to-code and enterprise management capabilities - Wonderful powerful device where and when you need it. This post shares the most recent new features.

Developing cloud-native apps with .NET Aspire and Visual Studio (Mark Downie) - Nice post that celebrates the general availability of .NET Aspire and shares many advantages of using it with Visual Studio.

It turns out, it's not difficult to remove all passwords from our Docker Compose files (Frank Boucher) - We all did it. Hardcoding password in code, because it's "just" a quick thing, or it's just for us, and we think it's okay... but is it? This post shares my learning while removing passwords from docker-compose file.

AI

Announcing the AI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code (John Lam) - Nice! The favorite editor of so many now have an AI extension! I missed the Microsoft Build sessions with the demos. Lucky me they are available on demand!


~frank



It turns out, it's not difficult to remove all passwords from our Docker Compose files

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I used to hardcode my password in my demos and code samples. I know it's not a good practice, but it's just for demo purposes, it cannot be that dramatic, right? I know there are proper ways to manage sensitive information, but this is only temporary! And it must be complicated to remove all the passwords from a deployment... It turns out, IT IS NOT difficult at all, and that will prevent serious threats.

In this post, I will share how to remove all passwords from a docker-compose file using environment variables. It's quick to setup and easy to remember. For production deployment, it's better to use secrets, because environment variables will be visible in logs. That said, for demos and debugging and testing, it's nice to see those values. The code will be available on GitHub. This deployment was used for my talks during Azure Developers .NET Days: Auto-Generate and Host Data API Builder on Azure Static Web Apps and The most minimal API code of all... none

The Before Picture

For this deployment, I used a docker-compose file to deploy an SQL Server in a first container and Data API Builder (DAB) in a second one. When the database container starts, I run a script to create the database tables and populate them.

services:

  dab:
    image: "mcr.microsoft.com/azure-databases/data-api-builder:latest"
    container_name: trekapi
    restart: on-failure
    volumes:
      - "./startrek.json:/App/dab-config.json"
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    depends_on:
      - sqlDatabase

  sqlDatabase:
    image: mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server
    container_name: trekdb
    hostname: sqltrek
    environment:
      ACCEPT_EULA: "Y"
      MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD: "1rootP@ssword"
    ports:
      - "1433:1433"
    volumes:
      - ./startrek.sql:/startrek.sql
    entrypoint:
      - /bin/bash
      - -c
      - |
        /opt/mssql/bin/sqlservr & sleep 30
        /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -U sa -P "1rootP@ssword" -d master -i /startrek.sql
        sleep infinity

As we can see, the password is in clear text twice, in the configuration of the database container and in the parameter for sqlcmd when populating the database. Same thing for the DAB configuration file. Here the data-source node where the password is in clear text in the connection string.

"data-source": {
 	"database-type": "mssql",
	"connection-string": "Server=localhost;Database=trek;User ID=sa;Password=myPassword!;",
	"options": {
		"set-session-context": false
	}
}

First Pass: Environment Variables

The easiest password instance to remove was in the sqlcmd command. When defining the container, an environment variable was used... Why not use it! To refer to an environment variable in a docker-compose file, you use the syntax $$VAR_NAME. I used the name of the environment variable MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD to replace the hardcoded password.

/opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -U sa -P $$MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD -d master -i /startrek.sql

Second Pass: .env File

That's great but the value is still hardcoded when we assign the environment variable. Here comes the environment file. They are text files that holds the values in key-value paired style. The file is not committed to the repository, and it's used to store sensitive information. The file is read by the docker-compose and the values are injected. Here is the final docker-compose file:

services:

  dab:
    image: "mcr.microsoft.com/azure-databases/data-api-builder:latest"
    container_name: trekapi
    restart: on-failure
    env_file:
      - .env
    environment:
      MY_CONN_STRING: "Server=host.docker.internal;Initial Catalog=trek;User ID=sa;Password=${SA_PWD};TrustServerCertificate=True"
    volumes:
      - "./startrek.json:/App/dab-config.json"
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    depends_on:
      - sqlDatabase

  sqlDatabase:
    image: mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server
    container_name: trekdb
    hostname: sqltrek
    environment:
      ACCEPT_EULA: "Y"
      MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD: ${SA_PWD}
    env_file:
      - .env
    ports:
      - "1433:1433"
    volumes:
      - ./startrek.sql:/startrek.sql
    entrypoint:
      - /bin/bash
      - -c
      - |
        /opt/mssql/bin/sqlservr & sleep 30
        /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -U sa -P $$MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD -d master -i /startrek.sql
        sleep infinity

Note the env_file directive in the services definition. The file .env is the name of the file used. The ${SA_PWD} tells docker compose to look for SA_PWD in the .env file. Here is what the file looks like:

SA_PWD=This!s@very$trongP@ssw0rd

Conclusion

Simple and quick. There are no reasons to still have the password in clear text in the docker compose files anymore. Even for a quick demo! Of course for a production deployment there are stronger ways to manage sensitive information, but for a demo it's perfect and it's secure.

During Microsoft Build Keynote on day 2, Julia Liuson and John Lambert talked about how trade actors are not only looking for the big fishes, but also looking at simple demos and old pieces of code, looking for passwords, keys and sensitive information.

Reading Notes #605

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It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Cloud

Programming

AI

~Frank

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