Posts related to: ASP.NET
Adding Runtime NuGet Package Loading to an Application
It's not a common use case, but if you need need to dynamically add external code at runtime, NuGet packages are the most familiar way for developers to add that functionality besides old-school direct assembly loading. In this post I look at my LiveReloadServer local Web Server tool and how I integrated both external assembly loading and NuGet package support to allow extensibility for the Razor (and Markdown) scripting functionality of LiveReloadServer.
Comparing Raw ASP.NET Request Throughput across Versions: 8.0 to 9.0 Edition
Once again I'm taking a look at the newish .NET release and how it compares to the previous release - this time .NET 9.0 from .NET 8.0. I'll run my simple load tests to compare performance and also discuss a number of anecdotes from running .NET 9.0 in production apps for the last couple of months.
Programmatic Html to PDF Generation using the WebView2 Control with .NET
In this post I describe how to use the Microsoft WebView2 control to automate HTML to PDF generation generically for any kind of Windows application, including services. We'll look at the WebView and it's printing functionality and some of the intricacies that are involved in hosting the WebView control outside of a desktop application context to provide unattended mode even in service context.
Microsoft renames ASP.NET 5 to ASP.NET Core 1.0
ASP.NET 5 has been renamed to ASP.NET Core 1.0 and in the process some major changes are happening to the framework very late in the release cycle. In this post I take a look at some of the concern I have when I see these drastic changes so late in the release cycle and some thoughts on how I've worked with ASP.NET Core so far and some of the trepidations I have moving forward.
Serving URLs with File Extensions in an ASP.NET MVC Application
I ran into an issue trying to create a specific file URL for Windows Live Writer in an MVC application, where I needed to return a very specific file based URL with an extension from an MVC application. Turns out that this is not as easy as it sounds.
Rebooting Database Localization for ASP.NET with West Wind Globalization 2.0
I'm happy to announce the release of Westwind.Globalization version 2.0 - a database resource localization library for ASP.NET. Version 2 is a major upgrade that includes many new features including support for new database providers, a brand new Web Resource Editor, much improved ASP.NET MVC support, vastly better support for importing and exporting Resx resources, creating of strongly typed classes and much more. There's also a new video that describes features and provides a getting started guide with some detailed background. In this post I review some of the new features and point at additional resources for more information.
ASP.NET MVC HttpVerbs.Delete/Put Routes not firing
If you're using ASP.NET MVC to build API endpoints in your application you might have run into a problem where the PUT and DELETE HTTP operations don't work - you get a 404 instead. Turns out that the IIS default configuration doesn't include the verbs for a required handler. Here's what the problem is, and how to fix it if it hits you.
Back to Basics: UTC and TimeZones in .NET Web Apps
Storing dates in persistent storage using UTC dates is a widely accepted best practice. But it's surprisingly complex using date data effectively if you want to let the user see dates and query data in their local time zone. Looking around I noticed that there's not a lot of comprehensive info on this topic, so I decided to take notes and write down some of the approaches I've used in this post. This post combines and overview and a number of helper routines specifically geared towards user timezone adjustments in typical ASP.NET Web applications.
Project Navigation and File Nesting in ASP.NET MVC Projects
Project navigation in large projects can be a pain as you have to sift through large amounts of files. I found myself re-organizing projects in a few different ways to make project navigation easier. In this blog post I share a few different approaches as well as some useful tooling to improve my daily workflow.
A dynamic RequireSsl Attribute for ASP.NET MVC
In ASP.NET MVC the RequireHttps attribute allows for securing controllers and controller methods, but it's limited to either on or off statically. In this post I discuss a custom attribute that can dynamically set SSL usage based on a configuration setting or delegate.
Updated ASP.NET Database Resource Provider
I've updated my database ASP.NET Resource Provider project into a more formal project with a new home page, and official GitHub repository for the source code as well as a getting started video. In this video I talk about what's new and a few examples on how to use the provider.
Re-examining ASP.NET and Helios Performance Tests
Spend a little time over the weekend re-running some of my ASP.NET raw throughput benchmarks on my new machine and found some interesting results. Much faster, but also some surprises with self-hosting and efficiency surprises with various Web API approaches.
Routes, Extensionless Paths and UrlEncoding in ASP.NET
When using custom routing in your ASP.NET applications be careful with encoding routes into paths. Specifically make sure that embedded route paths are properly encoded and that you watch out for a few gotchas related to path encoding. This post demonstrates how to set up routes for a WebForms app and demonstrates a couple of potential problems of manual route encodings and the fixes.
Use IIS Application Initialization for keeping ASP.NET Apps alive
Ever want to run a service-like, always-on application inside of ASP.NET instead of creating a Windows Service or running a Console application? Need to make sure that your ASP.NET application is always running and comes up immediately after an Application Pool restart even if nobody hits your site? The IIS Application Initialization Module provides this functionality in IIS 7 and later, making it much easier to create always-on ASP.NET applications that can act like a service.
Rendering ASP.NET MVC Razor Views outside of MVC revisited
Rendering ASP.NET MVC Views outside of the context of MVC can be immensely useful for various administration, error and logging tasks. Luckily there are some easy ways to render MVC even outside of an MVC controller. Here's some information on how to make that happen.