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James Flower

James Flower

Supporting Multiple WS-Federation Authentication Schemes in ASP.NET Core

Supporting Multiple WS-Federation Authentication Schemes in ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core allows you to add support for multiple authentication schemes, such as social auth providers or WS-Federation. This support can be added with or without ASP.NET Identity Core. Users can then use these schemes to authenticate with your web application. While adding support for social authentication providers

Install Docker Engine without Docker Desktop on Windows

Install Docker Engine without Docker Desktop on Windows

Docker have recently announced changes to their pricing and subscriptions which require a paid subscription for users outside of personal, education and small business use. It seems that this license change only applies to Docker Desktop which is the GUI client for Windows and Mac. The good news is that

AI Assistance for Software Developer Productivity – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

AI Assistance for Software Developer Productivity – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Software Development can have moments of writing repetitive code. Following the DRY principle can help avoid this, but sometimes one block of code isn’t doing the same thing as another, although it is doing something similar (such as mapping objects in a collection). In these cases AI can be

Using ngrok with IIS Express and ASP.NET Core

Using ngrok with IIS Express and ASP.NET Core

Sometimes it can be helpful to quickly make the version of a project which is running on your development machine available to others. This could be for webhook integrations, demos, or some other reason. One of the tools you can use to achieve this is ngrok. ngrok creates a secure

Microsoft Remote Desktop (RDP) Stuck on "Please Wait"

Microsoft Remote Desktop (RDP) Stuck on "Please Wait"

I often use Remote Desktop Connection (RDP) to connect to computers remotely when I am out and about. However, recently when I tried to remotely connect using RDP, I became stuck at a blue screen with a “Please Wait” message after connecting. After a few minutes of waiting, I became

Logging in .NET Core using ILogger

Logging in .NET Core using ILogger

Logging is an important part of software development. It helps us know that tasks have been completed, monitor applications and provides a trail to follow when things don’t work. Microsoft has included a logging framework in .NET Core and ASP.NET Core to allow developers to easily implement logging

Using a Vue.js SPA with ASP.NET Core Web API

Using a Vue.js SPA with ASP.NET Core Web API

I recently started working on a new side project and decided to implement it as a single page application (SPA). For this, I chose to build an API powered by an ASP.NET Core Web API and a Vue.js powered front-end to consume the API. I could find templates

Handling null values in C#

Handling null values in C#

Handling null values in C# and .NET comes with the territory. Null values were introduced by Tony Hoare in mid-1960s to represent missing or unknown data. This is a useful capability but it has resulted in null reference exceptions becoming one of the most common causes of bugs which developers

What makes a good log message?

What makes a good log message?

Logging can provide important information about the behaviour of software applications. It allows operations staff to monitor application performance and gives developers a trail to follow when trying to diagnose the cause of errors. With this in mind, it is worth considering what is good information to record in a

How to send emails in .NET Core with MimeKit and Mailkit

How to send emails in .NET Core with MimeKit and Mailkit

The ability for an application to send emails is a very common requirement. This can be for emails such as providing account information, sending marketing emails or even a password reset email. This post will cover how to send an email using MimeKit and MailKit from an ASP.NET Core

Changing Query String Values in ASP.NET MVC

Changing Query String Values in ASP.NET MVC

Recently I was trying to update a query string by adding or updating a parameter for URLs generated in a partial view. I found an excellent example for achieving this by setting route data here however this didn’t preserve current query string values in the URL. I’ve extended

Disabling an ASP.NET MVC input control

Disabling an ASP.NET MVC input control

I love ASP.NET MVC. It is a great framework to get web apps quickly built. However using the built in HtmlHelper methods on your views isn’t without its issues. An example of this is when trying to disable a HTML input control which has been built using HtmlHelper.

Fixed/Sticky Headers on ASP.NET GridView using jQuery

Fixed/Sticky Headers on ASP.NET GridView using jQuery

The GridView control in ASP.NET Web Forms is an extremely useful and quick way of getting data out to the user in a nice tabular format. It does have one weak spot though and that is some of the tags it uses when doing this. Specifically, not putting the

Sending e-mails through Office 365

Sending e-mails through Office 365

I recently signed up for an Office 365 Business Essentials subscription to get the benefit of Exchange and other nice features without the hassle of managing it myself, as part of this I wanted to setup a no-reply e-mail address I could use to send automated e-mails without having to

Strongly Typed Data in ASP .NET Web Forms

Strongly Typed Data in ASP .NET Web Forms

In ASP .NET Web Forms you’ve previously had to use strings to specify which properties you’d like to output when databinding, which would probably end up looking something like the following. "> In all likelihood it could probably look far less tidy if you’ve ever needed to do

Install WPScan on Ubuntu 13.10

Install WPScan on Ubuntu 13.10

Prerequisites Since Ubuntu 13.10 doesn’t come set up for development work out of the box there are a few things you need to download and install first. Thankfully this is made easy by apt-get by just running the following command to get everything ready. sudo apt-get install libcurl4-gnutls-dev

Send E-mail through Microsoft Exchange using .NET

Send E-mail through Microsoft Exchange using .NET

Recently I needed to send an e-mail using Microsoft Exchange Server from an ASP .NET Web App. My first attempt involved using the classes in the System.Net.Mail namespace however I quickly realised this wasn’t the way to be going about it as I had very little luck

Using a RequiredFieldValidator on a DropDownList in ASP .NET

Using a RequiredFieldValidator on a DropDownList in ASP .NET

In most applications today drop-down lists default to a “Please select..” option with some form of validation to ensure the user makes their own selection. In ASP .NET web forms this frequently results in a drop-down list being created using code similar to that displayed below. We can add an

Boot Camp Support Software

Boot Camp Support Software

After upgrading a Boot Camp Windows 7 installation to Windows 8 I found that the Boot Camp drivers needed to be updating to regain control of the function keys and built-in camera. The Boot Camp software is available at Apple Boot Camp Support Website. After the download I found the

How to allow HTML content in ASP .NET MVC

How to allow HTML content in ASP .NET MVC

Sometimes in web development, you need to provide an easy-to-use editor for non-technical users to input or change content where extra styling is required such as making text bold or italic. However unless you use (or code yourself) an editor which uses some form of BBCode you’re going to

ASP .NET AJAX Control Toolkit Reorder List control and LINQ

ASP .NET AJAX Control Toolkit Reorder List control and LINQ

The ASP .NET AJAX Toolkit is quite a useful and yet under-used set of controls. However they can also quickly lead to bizarre issues and worse performance than normal if they are not properly understood or used correctly. This issue is compounded when you take into consideration that quite a