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European ASP.NET Core Hosting :: File Upload in Angular 7

clock September 20, 2019 10:52 by author Scott

In this article, we will see how to upload a file into the database using the Angular 7 app in an ASP.NET project. Let us create a new project in Visual Studio 2017. We are using ASP.NET Core 2 and Angular 7 for this project.

Prerequisites:

  • Node JS must be installed
  • Angular CLI must be installed
  • Basic knowledge of Angular

Let’s get started.

Create a new project and name it as FileUploadInAngular7

Select a new project with Angular in .NET Core and uncheck the configure HTTPS

Your project will be created. Left click on ClientApp and open it in file explorer

Type cmd as shown in the picture.

Type npm install in the cmd

Now it will take time and all the node_modules will be installed in the project.

Create a Web API controller as UploadController.

Add the following code in it.

using System.IO;
using System.Net.Http.Headers;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
namespace FileUploadInAngular7.Controllers
{
    [Produces("application/json")]
    [Route("api/[controller]")]
    public class UploadController : Controller
    {
        private IHostingEnvironment _hostingEnvironment;
        public UploadController(IHostingEnvironment hostingEnvironment)
        {
            _hostingEnvironment = hostingEnvironment;
        }
        [HttpPost, DisableRequestSizeLimit]
        public ActionResult UploadFile()
        {
            try
            {
                var file = Request.Form.Files[0];
                string folderName = "Upload";
                string webRootPath = _hostingEnvironment.WebRootPath;
                string newPath = Path.Combine(webRootPath, folderName);
                if (!Directory.Exists(newPath))
                {
                    Directory.CreateDirectory(newPath);
                }
                if (file.Length > 0)
                {
                    string fileName = ContentDispositionHeaderValue.Parse(file.ContentDisposition).FileName.Trim('"');
                    string fullPath = Path.Combine(newPath, fileName);
                    using (var stream = new FileStream(fullPath, FileMode.Create))
                    {
                        file.CopyTo(stream);
                    }
                }
                return Json("Upload Successful.");
            }
            catch (System.Exception ex)
            {
                return Json("Upload Failed: " + ex.Message);
            }
        }
    }
}

Navigate to the following path and open both the files.

In home.component.html write the following code.

<h1>File Upload Using Angular 7 and ASP.NET Core Web API</h1>
<input #file type="file" multiple (change)="upload(file.files)" />
<br />
<span style="font-weight:bold;color:green;" *ngIf="progress > 0 && progress < 100">
  {{progress}}%
</span>
<span style="font-weight:bold;color:green;" *ngIf="message">
  {{message}}
</span>

In home.component.ts file write the following code in it.

import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core';
import { HttpClient, HttpRequest, HttpEventType, HttpResponse } from '@angular/common/http';
@Component({
  selector: 'app-home',
  templateUrl: './home.component.html',
})
export class HomeComponent {
  public progress: number;
  public message: string;
  constructor(private http: HttpClient) { }
  upload(files) {
    if (files.length === 0)
      return;
    const formData = new FormData();
    for (let file of files)
      formData.append(file.name, file);
    const uploadReq = new HttpRequest('POST', `api/upload`, formData, {
      reportProgress: true,
    });
    this.http.request(uploadReq).subscribe(event => {
      if (event.type === HttpEventType.UploadProgress)
        this.progress = Math.round(100 * event.loaded / event.total);
      else if (event.type === HttpEventType.Response)
        this.message = event.body.toString();
    });
  }
}

Run the project and you will see the following output.



European ASP.NET Core Hosting :: InProcess and OutOfProcess Hosting Model In ASP.NET Core

clock September 17, 2019 11:37 by author Scott

Once you finish developing an ASP.NET Core web application, you need to deploy it on a server so that end users can start using it. When it comes to deployment to IIS, ASP.NET Core offers two hosting models namely InProcess and OutOfProcess. In this article you learn about these hosting models and how to configure them.

When you deploy your web application to IIS, various requests to the application are handled by what is known as ASP.NET Core Module. Under default settings the hosting model for your application is InProcess. This means ASP.NET Core Module forwards the requests to IIS HTTP Server (IISHttpServer). The IIS HTTP Server is a server that runs in-process with IIS. This results in great performance as compared to Out Of Process model. In-process models bypasses built-in Kestrel web server of ASP.NET Core.

If you decide to use Out-Of-Process hosting model then IIS HTTP Server won't be used. Instead Kestrel web server is used to process your requests. So, ASP.NET Core Module forwards your requests to Kestrel web server. This communication is out-of-process communication and is therefore slower than the in-process model.

Now that you have some basic idea about the in-process and out-of-process hosting models let's see how to configure them.

In order to understand the hosting models discussed in this article you first need to create an ASP.NET Core web application using Visual Studio. So, go ahead and do so based on any of the web application project templates. Make sure to use ASP.NET Core version 2.2 or later.

Once you create the project, click on the Build > Publish menu and Web Deploy the output (or manually copy to IIS) to IIS. Once you finish deploying the application locate the web.config file generated during the deployment process. In this web.config you will find a section like this:

<system.webServer>
  <handlers>
    <add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*"
modules="AspNetCoreModuleV2" />
  </handlers>
  <aspNetCore processPath="dotnet"
              arguments=".\MyWebApp.dll"  
              stdoutLogEnabled="false"
              stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout"
              hostingModel="inprocess" />
</system.webServer>

As you can see the <aspNetCore> tag has hostingModel attribute that is set to inprocess by default.

Now, run the application from the browser with this default setting in place and observe the HTTP headers. The following figure shows one such sample run of the application.

As you can see the Server is Microsoft IIS.

Now, change the hostingModel attribute from inprocess to outofprocess. Run the application again. This time you will get the following output:

As you can see the Server is now Kestrel indicating that Out-Of-Process model is active.

In the preceding example you change the hosting model in the web.config generated during the publish operation. You can also specify the hosting model in project's .csproj file. Consider the following markup from .csproj file that does that.

<PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.2</TargetFramework>
    <AspNetCoreHostingModel>InProcess</AspNetCoreHostingModel>
</PropertyGroup>

The <AspNetCoreHostingModel> element sets the hosting model to InProcess. To set it to Out-Of-Process you need to set it like this:

<AspNetCoreHostingModel>OutOfProcess</AspNetCoreHostingModel>

Run the application with these settings and confirm whether you get the outcome as before.

That's it for now! Keep coding!!



European ASP.NET Core Hosting :: Dynamically Check And Uncheck Checkbox Based On DB Value In Gridview

clock July 23, 2019 12:23 by author Peter

This code will help the developers to check and uncheck the gridview checkbox based on the value from the database.
Create a GridView with checkbox.

<asp:GridView ID="Gridview" runat="server" Font-Size="8pt" 
        PageSize="200" Width="880px" AutoGenerateColumns="False"> 
        <Columns> 
            <asp:TemplateField> 
                <HeaderTemplate> 
                    <asp:CheckBox ID="chkHeader" Text="Select All" runat="server" /> 
                </HeaderTemplate> 
                <ItemTemplate> 
                    <asp:CheckBox ID="chkChild" runat="server"  Checked='<%# Eval("PROCESSED").ToString().Equals("1") %>' Enabled='<%# !Eval("PROCESSED").ToString().Equals("1") %>'/> 
                </ItemTemplate> 
            </asp:TemplateField>            
        </Columns> 
    </asp:GridView> 


Get the data from the database, the field from the database to check the checkbox should be 1 or 0.

DB Table data

PROCESSED (HEADER)
1
1
0

DataField "PROCESSED" should be 1 or 0 (boolean),

Checked='<%# Eval("PROCESSED").ToString().Equals("1") %>' 

The above GridView code will check the checkbox if the value from the PROCESSED field in DB is 1 else if the PROCESSED value is other than 1 the checkbox will be unchecked,

Enabled='<%# !Eval("PROCESSED").ToString().Equals("1") %>' 

This code will help us to enable or disable the text box. In the above mentioned code, if the PROCESSED is 1, checkbox will be disabled else the checkboc will be enable.

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European ASP.NET Core Hosting :: A Quick And Simple Look Into .NET Core And Comparison To .NET Standard

clock July 16, 2019 11:54 by author Peter
First, as Microsoft simply described, .NET Core is an open-source, general-purpose development platform maintained by Microsoft and the .NET community on GitHub. .NET is cross-platform which supports Windows, macOS, and Linux and can be used to implement devices, cloud, and IoT applications. Historically, the .NET Framework had only worked on Windows devices. The Xamarin and Mono projects worked to bring .NET to mobile devices, macOS, and Linux. .NET Core provides a standard base library that can now be used across Windows, Linux, macOS, and mobile devices, still via Xamarin.

.NET Core has multiple characteristics such as cross-platform programming for Windows, Linux, MacOS, as well as consistency across architectures. It runs your code with the same behavior on multiple architectures, including x64, x86, and ARM. .NET Core provides flexible deployment, can be included in your app or installed side-by-side such as user-wide or system-wide installations, and can be used with Docker containers.

.NET Core makes it simpler for developers to build microservice architecture systems promptly. As such, systems include several independent and dynamic microservices, the developers can focus on specific microservices. .NET Core enables programmers to develop custom microservices by using varying programming languages, technologies, and frameworks. Likewise, the developers can build a robust system by combining multiple microservices flawlessly.

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE SUPPORT
From a programming point of view C#, Visual Basic, and F# languages can be used to write applications and libraries for .NET Core. Additionally, with .NET Core 3.0 C# 8.0 will be supported. Currently, VB.NET compiles and runs on .NET Core, but the separate Visual Basic Runtime is not implemented. Microsoft announced that .NET Core 3 would include the Visual Basic Runtime.

GENERAL SUPPORTED FEATURES
.NET Core supports four cross-platform scenarios: ASP.NET Core web apps, command-line apps, libraries, and Universal Windows Platform apps. However, it does not presently apply Windows Forms or WPF which render the standard GUI for desktop software on Windows. Also, .NET Core 3 supports desktop technologies WinForms, WPF and UWP. Besides these, .NET Core supports the use of NuGet packages. Differently than before like .NET Framework, which is serviced using Windows Update, .NET Core depends on its package manager to get updates.

.NET Core consists of CoreCLR, a whole runtime implementation of the Common Language Runtime, which created at Microsoft as the virtual machine for handling execution of .NET programs and includes a just-in-time compiler called RyuJIT. Moreover, .NET Core also contains CoreRT, the .NET Native runtime enhanced to be integrated into AOT compiled native binaries.

.NET Core also includes CoreFX, which is a partial branch of .NET Framework standard libraries. While .NET Core shares a subset of .NET Framework APIs and comes with its own API that is not a subset of .NET Framework. Also, a variant of the .NET Core library is used for UWP.

.NET Core's command-line interface provides an execution entry point for operating systems and gives developer services similar compilation and package management.

Use .NET Core when

  • You want to build cross-platform applications
  • If the new application (web or service) needs to run on multiple platforms- Windows, Linux, macOS, choose .NET Core over .NET Framework. Visual Studio Code and third-party editors such as Sublime, Emacs, VI support .NET Core for cross-platform development.
  • The need is to build high-performance and scalable systems
  • When a performance-oriented and scalable system is on the list, it is better to prefer .NET Core over the .NET Framework. Reason being, .NET Core offers high-performance server runtime for Linux and Windows Server.
  • When you are using microservices or Docker containers
  • For applications or services that use microservices or Docker containers, opting .NET Core makes more sense. Reasons include,
    • .NET Core facilitates mixing microservices or services developed with Ruby, Java, .NET Framework, or other monolithic technologies.
    • Containers usually work in conjugation with microservices architecture. With .NET Framework, there is a limitation to work with Windows containers only. Moreover, while creating and deploying a container, the image size is smaller with .NET Core vs .NET Framework.
  • You need side-by-side .NET versions per application
  • For applications that may have a dependency on different versions of .NET for installation, opt for .NET Core. .NET Core offers side by side installation of multiple versions for .NET Core runtime on the same machine.

Use the .NET Framework when:

  • The app is using .NET technologies that are not available for .NET Core.
  • Several .NET technologies are not available for .NET Core. For example, ASP.NET web pages applications or workflow related services (WCF Data Services, Windows Workflow Foundation) are not included in. NET Core.
  • The existing app uses a platform that .NET Core does not support.
  • Some of the Microsoft or third-party services/platforms do not offer support to .NET Core. For example, Azure’s Service Fabric Stateful Reliable Services programming model does not support .NET Core and is available for.NET Framework.

Finally, the .NET Framework supports Windows and web applications. .NET Core is the new open-source and cross-platform framework to build applications for all operating systems including Windows, Mac, and Linux. .NET Core supports UWP and ASP.NET Core only.

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European ASP.NET Core Hosting :: Register And Use Multiple Implementations Of A Dependency In ASP.NET Core Dependency Injection

clock July 12, 2019 12:13 by author Peter

There can be situations where you need to register multiple implementations of the same dependency for your applications. For example, if you want to add features to your application without changing the existing code, a good way to do it is to add a new implementation for that. Your application needs to be written in a certain way to do this correctly. We have a really simple example that demonstrates this in this article. But when you eventually need to do this, ASP.Net Core built-in Dependency Injection providers capabilities to achieve this. In this article, we will look at how to do this with an example.
Registering Multiple Implementations of a Dependency

As an example, let’s take an online e-commerce website. This site gives Discounts to the customers on certain occasions and when certain conditions are met. I have an interface called IDiscount where it defines a discount and the logic to calculate it. For each type of discount, you want to provide in your e-commerce application, you can have an implementation of the IDiscount interface. Then I have an interface called IDiscountProcessor where the implementation of this interface handles calling all the implementations of IDiscount to calculate the final discount for a given Order.

You have a couple of ways to register multiple implementations of a dependency in ASP.Net Core. One way is to just use the provided extension methods on IServiceCollection to register your implementations with the desired lifetime.
    services.AddScoped<IDiscountProcessor, OrderDiscountProcessor>(); 
    services.AddScoped<IDiscount, SeasonalDiscount>(); 
    services.AddScoped<IDiscount, LargeOrderDiscount>(); 
    services.AddScoped<IDiscount, ThreeOrModeDiscount>();  


Here, I have registered the OrderDiscountProcessor implementation of IDiscountProcessor and 3 implementations of IDiscount interface.

This will work fine when we eventually resolve all the implementations of IDiscount interface we can calculate the total discount. But the problem comes when you have multiple registrations of the same implementation. For example, let’s say one of the developers accidentally registered SeasonalDiscount implementation twice. What will happen is that the Seasonal discount will be applied twice for all the orders, costing the organization money.

A better way of registering multiple implementations is to use TryAddEnumerable extension method given in the Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection.Extensions namespace. This will not register any duplicate implementations making multiple implementation registration safe. The registration is a bit different where you need to use ServiceDescriptors to register the dependency. The modified implementation looks like this.
    services.AddScoped<IDiscountProcessor, OrderDiscountProcessor>(); 
    services.TryAddEnumerable(new[] 
    { 
        ServiceDescriptor.Scoped<IDiscount, SeasonalDiscount>(), 
        ServiceDescriptor.Scoped<IDiscount, LargeOrderDiscount>(), 
        ServiceDescriptor.Scoped<IDiscount, ThreeOrModeDiscount>() 
    }); 


Injecting and Using Multiple Implementations of a Dependency

Once your implementations are registered with the Dependency Injection container, they are ready to be used. To inject all the registered implementations, you need to use IEnumerable<> of the implementation type in your constructor. So, your constructor would look something like this. This is our OrderDiscountProcessor implementation.
    public class OrderDiscountProcessor : IDiscountProcessor 
    { 
        private readonly IEnumerable<IDiscount> _discounts; 
     
        public OrderDiscountProcessor(IEnumerable<IDiscount> discounts) 
        { 
            _discounts = discounts; 
        } 
        // ... 
    } 


Here I am injecting IEnumerable<IDiscount> where it injects all the registered implementations to my class. Then in my ProcessDiscount() method I can use the implementations like this.
    public (double, List<string>) ProcessDiscount(OrderViewModel order) 
    { 
        var discountDiscroptoons = new List<string>(); 
        var totalDiscount = 0.0; 
     
        foreach (var discount in _discounts) 
        { 
            var addedDiscount = discount.CalculateDiscount(order); 
            if (addedDiscount > 0) 
            { 
                 discountDiscroptoons.Add(discount.Description); 
            } 
            totalDiscount += addedDiscount; 
        } 
     
        return (totalDiscount, discountDiscroptoons); 
     } 


I can now iterate through all the implementations of IDiscount interface and call its CalculateDiscount() method to calculate the discount for the given Order.

Note that you can only use IEnumerable<> for your injections of multiple implementations. Any other type like IList<>, ICollection<> will not work in this case.
Summary

In this article, we looked into the process of how to register multiple implementations of the same dependency in ASP.NET Core and how to use these dependencies in our classes by injecting them. The simple sample application used to demonstrate this usage is available for download with this article or you can find the source code on GitHub under the following repository

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European ASP.NET Core Hosting :: How to Fix “An error occurred while starting the application” in ASP.NET Core on IIS

clock July 5, 2019 07:33 by author Scott

.NET Core is the latest Microsoft product and Microsoft always keep update their technologies. We have written tutorial about how to publish ASP.NET Core on IIS server, but we know that some of you sometimes receive error when deploying your ASP.NET Core. Feel frustrated to fix the issue? Yeah, not only you have headache, but some of our clients also experience same problem like you. That’s why we write this tutorial and hope it can help to fix your issue!

Anyone see this error? Have problem to solve it? We want to help you here!

The Problem

 

It basically means something bad happened with your application. Things you need to check

  • You might not have the correct .NET Core version installed on the server.
  • You might be missing DLL’s
  • Something went wrong in your Program.cs or Startup.cs before any exception handling kicked in

If you use Windows Server, then I believe that you can’t find anything on your Event Viewer too. You’ll notice that there is no error on your Event Viewer log. Why? This is because Event Logging must be wired up explicitly and you’ll need to use the Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.EventLog package, and depending on the error, you might not have a chance to even catch it to log to the Event Viewer.

How to Fix it?

So, how to fix error above? The followings are the steps to fix the error:

1. Open your web.config

2. Change stdoutLogEnabled=true

3. Create a logs folder

  • Unfortunately, the AspNetCoreModule doesn’t create the folder for you by default
  • If you forget to create the logs folder, an error will be logged to the Event Viewer that says: Warning: Could not create stdoutLogFile \\?\YourPath\logs\stdout_timestamp.log, ErrorCode = -2147024893.
  • The “stdout” part of  the value “.\logs\stdout” actually references the filename not the folder.  Which is a bit confusing.

4. Run your request again, then open the \logs\stdout_*.log file

Note – you will want to turn this off after you’re done troubleshooting, as it is a performance hit.

So your web.config’s aspNetCore element should look something like this

 <aspNetCore processPath=”.\YourProjectName.exe” stdoutLogEnabled=”true” stdoutLogFile=”.\logs\stdout” />

Doing this will log all the requests out to this file and when the exception occurs, it will give you the full stack trace of what happened in the \logs\stdout_*.log file

  

 

 

Hope this helps!

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European ASP.NET Core Hosting :: How to Host ASP.NET Core Application as a Windows Service

clock July 4, 2019 08:38 by author Scott

I recently came across the need to host a .NET Core web app as a Windows Service. In this case, it was because each machine needed to locally be running an API. But it’s actually pretty common to have a web interface to manage an application on a PC without needing to set up IIS. For example if you install a build/release management tool such as Jenkins or TeamCity, it has a web interface to manage the builds and this is able to be done without the need for installing and configuring an additional web server on the machine.

Luckily .NET Core actually has some really good tools for accomplishing all of this (And even some really awesome stuff for being able to run a .NET Core web server by double clicking an EXE if that’s your thing).

A Standalone .NET Core Website/Web Server

The first step actually has nothing to do with Windows Services. If you think about it, all a Windows Service is, is a managed application that’s hidden in the background, will restart on a machine reboot, and if required, will also restart on erroring. That’s it! So realistically what we first want to do is build a .NET Core webserver that can be run like an application, and then later on we can work out the services part.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I’m just going to be using the default template for an ASP.net Core website. The one that looks like this:

We first need to head to the csproj file of our project and add in a specific runtime (Or multiple), and an output type. So overall my csproj file ends up looking like:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.1</TargetFramework>
    <RuntimeIdentifiers>win10-x64;</RuntimeIdentifiers>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
  </PropertyGroup> 

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.App" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

Our RuntimeIdentifiers (And importantly notice the “s” on the end there) specifies the runtimes our application can be built for. In my case I’m building only for Windows 10, but you could specify other runtime monkiers if required.

Ontop of this, we specify that we want an outputtype of exe, this is so we can have a nice complete exe to run rather than using the “dotnet run” command to start our application. I’m not 100% sure, but the exe output that comes out of this I think is simply a wrapper to boot up the actual application dll. I noticed this because when you change code and recompile, the exe doesn’t change at all, but the dll does.

Now we need to be able to publish the app as a standalone application. Why standalone? Because then it means any target machine doesn’t have to have the .NET Core runtime installed to get everything running. Ontop of that, there is no “what version do you have installed?” type talk. It’s just double click and run.

To publish a .NET Core app as standalone, you need to run the following command from the project directory in a command prompt/powershell:

dotnet publish --configuration Release --self-contained -r win10-x64

It should be rather self explanatory. We are doing a publish, using the release configuration, we pass through the self contained flag, and we pass through that the runtime we are building for is Windows 10 – 64 Bit.

From your project directory, you can head to:  \bin\Release\netcoreapp2.1\win10-x64\publish

This contains your application exe as well as all framework DLL’s to run without the need for a runtime to be installed on the machine. It’s important to note that you should be inside the Publish folder. One level up is also an exe but this is not standalone and relies on the runtime being installed.

From your publish folder, try double clicking yourapplication.exe.

Hosting environment: Production
Content root path: \bin\Release\netcoreapp2.1\win10-x64\publish
Now listening on:
http://localhost:5000
Now listening on: https://localhost:5001
Application started. Press Ctrl+C to shut down.

In your browser head to http://localhost:5000 and you now have your website running from an executable. You can copy and paste this publish folder onto any Windows 10 machine, even a fresh install, and have it spin up a webserver hosting your website. Pretty impressive!

Installing As A Window Service

So the next part of this tutorial is actually kinda straight forward. Now that you have an executable that hosts your website, installing it as a service is exactly the same as setting up any regular application as a service. But we will try and have some niceties to go along with it.

First we need to do a couple of code changes for our app to run both as a service, and still be OK running as an executable (Both for debugging purposes, and in case we want to run in a console window and not as a service).

We need to install the following from your package manager console:

Install-Package Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.WindowsServices

Next we need to go into our program.exe and make your main method look like the following:

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
 var isService = !(Debugger.IsAttached || args.Contains("--console"));
 var builder = CreateWebHostBuilder(args.Where(arg => arg != "--console").ToArray()); 

 if (isService)
 {

 var pathToExe = Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainModule.FileName;
 var pathToContentRoot = Path.GetDirectoryName(pathToExe);
 builder.UseContentRoot(pathToContentRoot);
 

 var host = builder.Build(); 

 if (isService)
 {
 host.RunAsService();
 }
 else
 {
 host.Run();
 }
}

This does a couple of things :

  • It checks whether we are using the debugger, or if we have a console argument of “–console” passed in.
  • If neither of the above are true, it sets the content root manually back to where the exe is running. This is specifically for the service runtime.
  • Next if we are a service, we use a special “RunAsService()” method that .NET Core gives us
  • Otherwise we just do a “Run()” as normal.

Obviously the main point of this is that if the debugger is attached (e.g. we are running from visual studio), or we run from a command prompt with the flag “–console”, it’s going to run exactly the same as before. Back in the day we used to have to run the service with a 10 second sleep at the start of the app, and quickly try and attach the debugger to the process before it kicked off to be able to set breakpoints etc. Now it’s just so much easier.

Now let’s actually get this thing installed!

In your project in Visual Studio (Or your favourite editor) add a file called install.bat to your project. The contents of this file should be:

sc create MyService binPath= %~dp0MyService.exe
sc failure MyService actions= restart/60000/restart/60000/""/60000 reset= 86400
sc start MyService
sc config MyService start=auto

Obviously replace MyService with the name of your service, and be sure to rename the exe to the actual name of your applications exe. Leave the %~dp0 part as this refers to the current batch path (Allowing you to just double click the batch file when you want to install).

The install file creates the service, sets up failure restarts (Although these won’t really be needed), starts the service, and sets the service to auto start in the future if the machine reboots for any reason.

Go ahead and create an uninstall.bat file in your project. This should look like:

sc stop MyService
timeout /t 5 /nobreak > NUL
sc delete MyService

Why the timeout? I sometimes found that it took a while to stop the service, and so giving it a little bit of a break inbetween stopping and deleting helped it along it’s way.

Important! For both of these files, be sure to set them up so they copy to the output directory in Visual Studio. Without this, your bat files won’t output to your publish directory.

Go ahead and publish your application again using our command from earlier:

dotnet publish --configuration Release --self-contained -r win10-x64

Now in your publish directory, you will find your install and uninstall bat files. You will need to run both of these as Administrator for them to work as installing Windows Services requires elevated access. A good idea is that the first time you run these, you run them from a command prompt so you can catch any errors that happen.

Once installed, you should be able to browse to http://localhost:5000 and see your website running silently in the background. And again, the best part is when you restart your machine, it starts automatically. Perfect!



European ASP.NET Core Hosting :: Integration Test ASP.NET Core

clock June 25, 2019 09:19 by author Scott

Writing integration tests for ASP.NET Core controller actions used for file uploads is not a rare need. It is fully supported by ASP.NET Core integration tests system. This post shows how to write integration tests for single and multiple file uploads.

Getting started

Suppose we have controller action for file upload that supports multiple files. It uses complex composite command for image file analysis and saving. Command is injected to action by framework-level dependency injection using controller action injection.

[HttpPost]
[Authorize(Roles = "Admin")]
public async Task<IActionResult> Upload(IList<IFormFile> files, int? parentFolderId,
                                        [FromServices]SavePhotoCommand savePhotoCommand)
{
    foreach(var file in files)
    {
        var model = new PhotoEditModel();
        model.FileName = Path.GetFileName(file.FileName);
        model.Thumbnail = Path.GetFileName(file.FileName);
        model.ParentFolderId = parentFolderId;
        model.File = file;
 
        list.AddRange(savePhotoCommand.Validate(model));
 
        await savePhotoCommand.Execute(model);
    }
 
    ViewBag.Messages = savePhotoCommand.Messages;
 
    return View();
}

We want to write integration tests for this action but we need to upload at least one file to make sure that command doesn’t fail.

Making files available for integration tests

It’s good practice to have files for testing available no matter where tests are run. It’s specially true when writing code in team or using continuous integration server to run integration tests. If we don’t have many files and the files are not large then we can include those files in project.

Important thing is to specify in Visual Studio that these files are copied to output folder.

Same way it’s possible to use also other types of files and nobody stops us creating multiple folders or folder trees if we want to organize files better.

Uploading files in integration tests

Here is integration tests class for controller mentioned above. Right now there’s only one test and it is testing Upload action. Notice how image files are loaded from TestPhotos folder to file streams and how form data object is built using the file streams.

public class PhotosControllerTests : IClassFixture<WebApplicationFactory<Startup>>
{
    private readonly WebApplicationFactory<Startup> _factory;
 
    public PhotosControllerTests(WebApplicationFactory<Startup> factory)
    {
        _factory = factory;
    }
 
    [Fact]
    public async Task Upload_SavesPhotoAndReturnSuccess()
    {
        // Arrange
        var expectedContentType = "text/html; charset=utf-8";
        var url = "Photos/Upload";
        var options = new WebApplicationFactoryClientOptions { AllowAutoRedirect = false };
        var client = _factory.CreateClient(options);
 
        // Act
        HttpResponseMessage response;
 
        using (var file1 = File.OpenRead(@"TestPhotos\rt-n66u.jpg.webp"))
        using (var content1 = new StreamContent(file1))
        using (var file2 = File.OpenRead(@"TestPhotos\speedtest.png.webp"))
        using (var content2 = new StreamContent(file2))
        using (var formData = new MultipartFormDataContent())
        {
            // Add file (file, field name, file name)
            formData.Add(content1, "files", "rt-n66u.jpg.webp");
            formData.Add(content2, "files", "speedtest.png.webp");
 
            response = await client.PostAsync(url, formData);
        }
 
        // Assert
        response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
        var responseString = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
 
        Assert.NotEmpty(responseString);
        Assert.Equal(expectedContentType, response.Content.Headers.ContentType.ToString());
 
        response.Dispose();
        client.Dispose();
    }
}

For actions that accept only one file we need only one call to Add() method of formData.

Wrapping up

Integration tests mechanism in ASP.NET Core is flexible enough to support also more advanced scenarios like file uploads in tests. It’s not very straightforward and we can’t just call few methods of HTTP client to do it but it’s still easy enough once we know the tricks. If we keep test files in integration tests project then we don’t have to worry about getting files to machine where integration tests are running.



European ASP.NET Core Hosting :: Alert Dialog From Controller Without JavaScript In View

clock May 9, 2019 12:27 by author Peter
We can show an alert dialog in the browser from Controller without using any JavaScript in the View, which saves our time and makes the popping up of dynamic data way faster.
 
Displaying an Alert Dialog popup can be done from the controller and even from the server-side, but it is very useful when you want to display an alert using much less code.
 
In your Controller, copy the below code just before your return code.

public ActionResult SmartRegister(csUser model)  
 {               
     User us = new User();  
     rfSocietyEntities db = new rfSocietyEntities();  
     if (ModelState.IsValid)  
     {  
         int count = db.Users.Where(a => a.Email.Equals(model.Email)).Count();  
         if (count == 0)  
         {  
             us.Admin = model.Admin;  
             us.Email = model.Email;  
             us.FullName = model.FullName;  
             us.Password = model.Password;  
             us.PhoneNo = model.PhoneNo;  
             db.Users.Add(us);  
             db.SaveChanges();  
             return RedirectToAction("Dashboard""Dashboard");  
         }  
         else  
         {  
             TempData["msg"] = "<script>alert('Email id already registered.');</script>";  
             return View (model);  
         }  
     }  
     else  
     {  
         TempData["msg"] = "<script>alert('Please Check Data entered or try later.');</script>";  
         return View(model);  
     }  
}    
In your View file, add the below code.
  @Html.Raw(TempData["msg"])




European ASP.NET Core Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: ASP.NET Core Security Headers

clock April 30, 2019 11:13 by author Peter

With the help of headers, your website could send some useful information to the browser. Let’s see how it is possible to add more protection to your website.
To add a header for each request, we can use middleware.

XSS and CSP
Still in the OWASP top 10, there is XSS - Cross-Site Scripting attack. Sure, it helps a lot to encode symbols before displaying text on the website (using any one of the HtmlEncoder, JavaScriptEncoder, and UrlEncoder). And, it’s better never to use @Html.Raw(). But it is also possible to add a header that will inform the browser to stop XSS attack. This kind of header is useful mostly for old browsers.
app.Use(async (context, next) =>  
{  
context.Response.Headers.Add("X-Xss-Protection", "1");  
await next();  
}); 


For new browsers, it is better to use CSP. Here is how it is possible to add the CSP header.
app.Use(async (context, next) =>  
{  
context.Response.Headers.Add(  
  "Content-Security-Policy",  
  "default-src 'self'; " +  
  "img-src 'self' myblobacc.blob.core.windows.net; " +  
  "font-src 'self'; " +  
  "style-src 'self'; " +  
  "script-src 'self' 'nonce-KIBdfgEKjb34ueiw567bfkshbvfi4KhtIUE3IWF' "+  
  " 'nonce-rewgljnOIBU3iu2btli4tbllwwe'; " +  
  "frame-src 'self';"+  
  "connect-src 'self';");  
await next();  
});  


In this example, it is allowed to run scripts.js files only from the current website (that is a meaning of ‘self’). And it is allowed to run 2 specified with “nonce” attribute scripts that are inserted in page inside script tag. For example, if you are using some script like this one inside your page.
<script>  
function showMessage() {  
alert("Just for demo");  
}   
</script>  

Then, you will be not able to run this script without adding ‘unsafe-inline’ into your CSP definition.

But adding ‘unsafe-inline’ means leaving your website not-protected. So, better move the script into .js file or use a nonce. Just add to your script attribute nonce with some random value. For example,
<script nonce="KUY8VewuvyUYVEIvEFue4vwyiuf"> </script>  

Then, you can add to your CSP script-scr value ‘nonce-KUY8VewuvyUYVEIvEFue4vwyiuf’ and you will be able to run scripts from exactly this <script> section.

‘unsafe-inlne’ is also related to events that are added to your html as attributes. Like onclick, onchange, onkeydown, onfocus. For example, instead of the following onclick event, you should add id or class to your element and call event from <script> or .js file.
<p onclick="showMessage()">Show message</p>  

Like this,
<p id="message-text">Show message</p>  

<script nonce=”KUY8VewuvyUYVEIvEFue4vwyiuf”>  
$(document).ready(function() {  
$("#message-text") (function() {  
alert( "Just for demo" );  
});   
});  
</script>  


X-Frame-Options
By default, it is possible to display your website inside an iframe. But with one small header, it is possible to disallow this. Why? Because someone could display your website inside a frame and place a transparent layer over it. And, the users would be thinking that they are clicking on your website buttons/links but in a real case, they would be clicking on items placed in the transparent layer. And as cookies still could be in the user’s browser, some operation could be authenticated. This kind of attack is called Clickjacking. And, here is a header to protect your website from this attack.
context.Response.Headers.Add("X-Frame-Options", "DENY");  

Content sniffing
By the next link File Upload XSS you can find a more or less fresh sample of how it is possible to inject JavaScript into an svg file. And if a file like this would be located on the server that would have content sniffing security enabled, then JavaScript wouldn’t work because svg extension doesn’t correspond to JS content. Hope you believe me now that the next header is required.
context.Response.Headers.Add("X-Content-Type-Options", "nosniff");  

Referrer-Policy
One of the headers that is automatically added by browsers is “Referer”. It contains a site from which the user has been transferred. Sometimes, that is convenient for analytics. But sometimes, the URL could contain some private information that is better not to be disclosed.

If you don’t want to allow browsers to display your website as last visited in “Referer” header, please use the Referrer-Policy: no-referrer

Here is an example of all headers in one middleware.
app.Use(async (context, next) =>  
{  
context.Response.Headers.Add("X-Xss-Protection", "1");  
context.Response.Headers.Add("X-Frame-Options", "DENY");  
context.Response.Headers.Add("Referrer-Policy", "no-referrer");  
context.Response.Headers.Add("X-Content-Type-Options", "nosniff");  
              context.Response.Headers.Add(  
  "Content-Security-Policy",  
  "default-src 'self'; " +  
  "img-src 'self' myblobacc.blob.core.windows.net; " +  
  "font-src 'self'; " +  
  "style-src 'self'; " +  
  "script-src 'self' 'nonce-KIBdfgEKjb34ueiw567bfkshbvfi4KhtIUE3IWF' "+  
  " 'nonce-rewgljnOIBU3iu2btli4tbllwwe'; " +  
  "frame-src 'self';"+  
  "connect-src 'self';");  
await next();  
});  


Sure, you can read information about each one header and change value to something more appropriate for your needs.
Strict-Transport-Security

For activating Strict-Transport-Security - web security policy mechanism that helps to protect your website from protocol downgrade attacks and cookie hijacking, add the next one to your middleware pipeline (or just don’t remove it),
app.UseHsts();  

This middleware will add “Strict-Transport-Security” header

Removing Server Header
Sometimes, headers could provide some information that is better to hide. To disable the Server header from Kestrel, you need to set AddServerHeader to false. Use UseKestrel() if your ASP.NET Core version is  lower than 2.2 and ConfigureKestrel() if not.
WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)  
     .UseKestrel(c => c.AddServerHeader = false)  
     .UseStartup<Startup>()  
     .Build();



About HostForLIFE.eu

HostForLIFE.eu is European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on Windows Platform only. We deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes.

We have offered the latest Windows 2016 Hosting, ASP.NET Core 2.2.1 Hosting, ASP.NET MVC 6 Hosting and SQL 2017 Hosting.


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