Posts related to: .NET
Getting Inherited Controller Routes to work in ASP.NET Core
Controller inheritance in ASP.NET Core is an edge case, but if you need it you have to be mindful of how route inheritance works in ASP.NET. This post explores why concrete class inheritance causes route duplication and provides a couple of solutions.
Creating Dual Use Windows GUI and Console Applications
Building a tool that provides both a rich Windows GUI and a functional CLI from a single executable presents unique challenges due to how Windows handles subsystem types. This post explores three approaches for dual-mode apps: attaching to consoles from a GUI, launching UIs from a console app, and creating separate specialized EXEs. I’ll share the "clean as possible" workarounds for console jank and window flashing used in my own production tools.
Creating a Packaged Windows Single File Web Site Viewer Executable
In this post I discuss how a self-contained Web Site Viewing tool using a single Windows executable that that packages and runs an entire website locally. I discuss the use case and implementation of creating a self-contained Windows executable that can be generated to contain both the executable itself and the data - in this case a zipped up Web site - to use.
Lost ASP.NET Identity Cookies on IIS Application Pool Restarts
If you find that your ASP.NET authentication cookies expire every time your IIS application pool restarts or recycles, the culprit is likely the DataProtection API not finding the previously stored keys. This post describes one gotcha I ran into with the default storage location on IIS in the user profile due to a default Application Pool setting.
Running ASP.NET Core Applications as a Subfolder Application
While ASP.NET Core applications typically run from the root folder, some scenarios—such as hosting multiple blogs under a single domain—require running from a subfolder. This post explains how to configure ASP.NET Core with app.UsePathBase() for proper routing and ~/ path resolution, along with the IIS setup required for a dedicated Application Pool using "No Managed Code." It also covers key migration tips, including bulk updates for root-relative links and JavaScript adjustments to keep client-side functionality working in a subfolder environment.
Getting the Client IP Address in ASP.NET Core
When I need to pick up the client IP Address in ASP.NET Core I always forget where to find the connection information and/or forget about picking proxy forwarding instead of the actual IP address. To make things easy and reusable, here's a small HttpRequest extension method.
Putting the Westwind.Scripting C# Templating Library to work, Part 2
In part 2 of this post series I look at some of the issues you may have to deal with when using the Westwind.Scripting library as an offline document or Web site creation engine. While running simple templates is easy enough, when generating static output for Web site publishing or local preview requires some special considerations.
Revisiting C# Scripting with the Westwind.Scripting Templating Library, Part 1
The `Westwind.Scripting` library provides runtime C# code compilation and execution as well as a C# based Script Template engine using Handlebars style syntax with pure C# code. In this post I discuss use cases for script templating and some examples of how I use in real-world applications, followed by a discussion of the engine's features and the new Layout, Section and Partials feature that was added recently.
Using .NET Native AOT to build Windows WinAPI Dlls
Did you know that you can use .NET AOT compilation to create native Windows DLLs to potentially replace traditional C/C++ compiled DLLs? It's now possible to build completely native DLLs that can be called from external applications and legacy applications in particular using .NET AOT compilation. In this post I show how this works and discuss the hits and misses of this tech.
Unpacking Zip Folders into Windows Long File Paths
Ah, long file paths bit me again today - this time with `ZipFile.ExtractToDirectory()` not unzipping long path files, even when specifying long path syntax for the output folder. In this post I briefly review Windows long path issues again, and describe what doesn't work and how to work around this particular problem. While specific to `ExtractToDirectory()` a similar approach might apply to other batch file based operations.
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.
Configuring Microsoft.AI.Extensions with multiple providers
Microsoft.Extensions.AI is the new base library for creating AI clients in an abstracted way. While the library does a great job with the abstraction of the interfaces it works with, the provider interfaces that create the intial abstractions like IChatClient are a lot less user friendly with hard to discover syntax based on extension methods and different syntax for each provider. In this post I review three providers and how to get them instantiated along with a small streaming example to use them.
Avoiding WPF Image Control Local File Locking
WPF locks local images when referenced via a Source attribute. In this post I discuss why this might be a problem and how you can work around it using native XAML and custom binding converter that provides a consolidated approach that includes image caching for better performance of reused images.
The Strong ARM of .NET: Wrestling with x64 and Arm64 Desktop App Deployment
.NET works great for cross-platform development making it easy to build apps that are cross-platform and cross-architecture specifically for x64 and Arm64. However, building a distributable application that can install and run out of box on both of these platforms, that's a bit more effort. In this post I discuss some of the gotchas and how to work around them to distribute apps that run out of the gate on both platforms.
Using Windows.Media SpeechRecognition in WPF
Windows has a pretty capable SpeechRecognition engine built-in via Windows Media services. In .NET these features are accessible via the Windows SDK (WinSdk) that expose these Windows features to .NET applications. In this post I discuss how you can integrate these features into a WPF application, and discuss some of the pitfalls along the way that you have to watch out for related to the SDK integration 'features'.