Hour 5: ASP.NET Core : Adding The Default View With _ViewStart.cshtml And Layout Page

In ASP.NET MVC there is a default layout file that the application use when one exists.  If you look at the markup at the top of the "Index.cshtml" file you will see that there is a markup to specify the layout of the page in the code below.

Hour 4: ASP.NET Core : Create Our First Controller and View

In the previous post we have enabled MVC on our application.  Now we want to add our first MVC controller and view to test out verify that MVC is working.  We also have to tell ASP.NET Core what pattern to look for when looking for our controllers and views.

Hour 3: Enable MVC On ASP.NET Core Application

In this post we will go over the process of enabling ASP.NET MVC in our application.  Just like static files, in order for us to use MVC in our application we have to tell ASP.NET Core to use Mvc in the Startup.cs file.  We will continue to use the application "NorthwindCafe" that we used in our previous blog.

Here are the steps to add MVC to your application:

1.  Open the Startup.cs file, then in "Configure" method type in the following to enable MVC

       
        // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to configure the HTTP request pipeline.
        public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
        {
            if (env.IsDevelopment())
            {
                app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
            }

            app.UseStaticFiles();
            app.UseMvc();
        }

Hour 2: Enable ASP.NET Core to Serve Static Files

As I have mentioned before ASP.NET Core decouples the application from the infrastructure as much as possible.  Therefore, you have to tell it exactly what you want in your project.  In this blog post we are going to tell ASP.NET that we want to serve static html files in our application.

Here are the steps to serve static files in our ASP.NET Core application.

1.  Open the "NorthwindCafe.Web" project, then click on the "Startup.cs" file in the project.  You will see the following markup in the Configure method

        public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app)
        {
            app.Run(async (context) =>
            {
                await context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello World!");
            });
        }

2.  Go into the Configure method, remove the existing code and type in the following code

        public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
        {
            if (env.IsDevelopment())
            {
                app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
            }
            app.UseDefaultFiles();
            app.UseStaticFiles();
        }

Hour 1: Create ASP.NET Core Project From Scratch

Technology has moved at a breakneck speed, after working with ASP.NET Core for a while, I realized that my ASP.NET MVC blog articles have become outdated.  Don't get me wrong, MVC is still a very big part of ASP.NET Core, but that's the thing it's just a part of it.  ASP.NET Core has decoupled the infrastructure from the application.  You can deploy your web app on Docker imagine that!  No longer is IIS your primary means of hosting your ASP.NET application.

However, with this new freedom comes added complexity.  No longer can you just drag and drop components into your design surface.  Those days are long gone.  This post ist meant to ease your way into ASP.NET Core.  I will using the release candidate version two of ASP.NET Core for this post and other subsequent posts.  I found out that I can't really follow my blog posts anymore to create the project with the latest version which is 2.1.  Don't use 2.2 for now because there's still not a lot of documentation on it.  So here is the updated version  I will be using Visual Studio 2017 for my development.  You can use the command line interface and notepad to develop your ASP.NET Core application.  But, I think that borders on insanity.

AngularJS SPA: Building The Bank Application JavaScript Objects (Business Entities)

Up until this point all we did was take care of the plumbing, MongoDB for the database, AngularJS as the application framework, expressJS for hosting, and Heroku as deployment infrastructure in the cloud. Whew! It feels like I am spitting out development hastags and buzzwords.  But, you know what they always say "it takes a village to build a SPA application".  Well they didn't say that, but they should! Who are they anyways?  The software engineer gods?  Or god forbid the mythical "full stack developers!!  Fear them the full stack developers!  But I don't know who they are, you ask.  Well they are just awesome! God says.  They are 10x!  Wow 10x, you said to yourself.  They must be good!  Hahaha  I just love the buzzwords.  It's entertaining.  I would never say I am a full stack developer.  I am just a developer who knows a lot of stuff.

In this post we are going to take a step back and start working on the actual application and take the plumbing out of the equation for a while.

As with any application at the center of it all is the question.  What does the application do?
Since our application is banking application, we will create objects that are in the banking domain.  This is called a domain driven design.  We are not going to follow the domain driven design (DDD) to a T, but we will follow the spirit of it.

ASP.NET MVC : Installing and Setting Up Ninject For Dependency Injection

In this post we are going to install Ninject which is a lightweight IOC container.  You can think of an IOC container as a magic toolbox that gives you the tools that you need when you need it.  Hence its called dependency injection, meaning it injects the dependencies that you need.  As with any IOC container there needs to be a mapping between the interfaces and the implementation.  That's where Ninject comes in.

First let's install Ninject with Nuget. here are the steps:

1. Open the Nuget Management Console and type in the following command

Install-Package Ninject -Version 3.2.2
Install-Package Ninject.Web.Common -Version 3.2.2
Install-Package Ninject.Mvc3 -Version  3.2.1

Spamming comments on my blog

I think I've gotten rid of all the spams on my blog.  It was quite an effort.  I am not going to be mean about it.  I know the spammers are just trying to do their job.  But just keep in mind that the people who comes to my blog are people who wants to learn about coding.  Heck I come here just for self reference.  So you can still spam is you want.  But, I will delete your spam.  I just hope people will learn from this blog. It's not the bible, but I hope you are interested in coding because of it.

Connect to Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine With Remote Desktop Connection (RDP)

The best way to connect to a virtual machine in Azure if it's a Windows operating system is through a Remote Desktop Connection or RDP.  In this post I am going to show how to set the Azure portal virtual machine to accept RDP connection from your desktop.

Create a Data Science Virtual Machine on Microsoft Azure

It is time consuming and a lot of work to set up your own data science virtual machine locally.  If you don't mind the cost, the alternative to is to setup a data science Virtual Machine in Azure and let Azure take care of the plumbing such as the hardware requirements and etc, because a data science Virtual Machine is a little beefier than an regular mainstream laptop.