ASP.NET Core TypeScript
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: compiling TypeScript as part of the project so the frontend gets types too.
21 articles in the notebook
ASP.NET.
ASP.NET Core memory cache
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: using the built-in memory cache for data you don't want to fetch on every request.
ASP.NET Core response cache
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: enabling response caching so identical requests are served without re-executing the pipeline.
ASP.NET Core AutoMapper
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: wiring up AutoMapper to map between entities and view/API models without hand-written copy code.
EF Core in separate project
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: moving EF Core into its own project so the data layer stays separated from the web application.
ASP.NET Core API with Swagger UI
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: exposing your API with Swagger UI so it documents and exercises itself.
ASP.NET Core API versioning
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: adding API versioning so /api/v1/ and /api/v2/ can coexist while clients migrate at their own pace.
ASP.NET Core MVC with /api/-area
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: carving out an /api/-area in an MVC project so pages and API endpoints live cleanly side by side.
ASP.NET Core managed config
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: binding appsettings.json to typed config classes so settings are managed code instead of magic strings.
ASP.NET Core logging with Serilog
Part of my ASP.NET Core recipe series: replacing the default logging with Serilog for structured logs with proper sinks.
ASP.NET Core MVC
The opening recipe in my ASP.NET Core series: setting up a clean MVC project as the foundation the rest of the recipes build on.
Setting up new .Net projects
After ~30 years and a few thousand projects, this is how I set up new .NET solutions: naming, project structure, .NET Standard vs Core choices — and the reasoning behind each habit. Not a book on architecture, just a clean, consistent setup.
ASP.Net 5 Identity Framework 3.0 manually adding users
Bulk-importing users through Identity Framework 3 kept failing with disposed-object and modified-collection errors. The culprit: async void. Change to async Task and await properly — code included.
ASP.Net 5 Areas
Visual Studio 2015 has no GUI support for Areas in ASP.Net 5 yet. The workaround is simple: create the folder structure manually and add an area route in Startup.cs — shown here.
Multiple deployment configs in one config file with ACL
Forgetting to swap config files at deployment can be disastrous. This approach keeps all environment configs in one file, selects the right one automatically, and uses ACLs so developers can't read production secrets.
Alternative directory layout for MVC
The default MVC folder layout scatters one feature across Controllers, Views and Scripts. As the project grows, grouping by feature instead keeps related files together — here is how to bend ASP.Net MVC to that layout.
ASP.Net Unhandled Exception Handling: Email exception with MiniDump
Every ASP.Net app I make emails me its unhandled exceptions — including a MiniDump of the process that you can load into Visual Studio as a paused project and inspect stack, locals and all. Here is the code.
Making ASP.Net recompile go faster
One web.config attribute — optimizeCompilations="true" — makes ASP.Net recompile only what actually changed. Less waiting between test runs; links to the patches needed for older Windows versions.
Tip: Always use ASP.Net State Server during development
Using ASP.Net State Server during development forces everything you put in Session to be serializable — which means switching to State Server or SQL sessions in production won't blow up in your face later.
.Net tools to use: log4net
First in a small series on .NET tools worth using: log4net, Apache's free logging framework. One line at the top of each class, a standard XML section in web.config, and you have proper leveled logging.
.Net tools to use: Nini
.NET tools to use, part two: Nini, an uncommonly powerful configuration library. Reads web.config, .ini and .xml config with type conversion and default values in a couple of lines.