Programming Archives - Jonathan Crozier

Substituting Moq for NSubstitute

In light of the recent controversy surrounding the .NET Moq library, many developers are reconsidering their choice of mocking framework for unit testing. The undisclosed inclusion of the proprietary SponsorLink DLL that reportedly extracts internal developer email addresses and uploads them to a remote server has undoubtedly been alarming to many. Beyond the immediate privacy…

Taming Nullable Reference Types in C#

InProgramming

The term Nullable Reference Types refers to a set of features introduced in C# 8.0 that help us to write cleaner, more robust code that is resistant to unintended null dereferencing. The features that are provided make us aware of possible null reference exceptions that could occur in our applications, reducing the likelihood of encountering…

Getting the path to a C# member via a lambda expression

InProgramming

Are you looking for a way of getting the path to a C# property, or some other type of object member, as a string and want to do so in a strongly-typed manner? For example, perhaps you are building your own API error response model and you want your error messages to contain member names…

How to get the Local AppData directory for all Windows users within a .NET application

InProgramming

Local AppData is a directory within the Windows operating system where software applications can store data that is specific to the current user. Getting the location of the Local AppData directory for the current user within a .NET application is straightforward. However, currently, there isn’t a .NET API that allows you to get the Local…

Subscribing to events dynamically using C#

InProgramming

When types from another assembly cannot be referenced statically at compile-time in a .NET application, subscribing to events defined in that assembly and subsequently accessing event arguments that are passed to event handlers can seem a little tricky. Thankfully, with the combination of the Reflection API and the dynamic operator, it is possible to subscribe…

Launching a GUI application from a Windows Service using C#

InProgramming

It isn’t usually possible to launch a GUI (Graphical User Interface) application from a Windows Service. There are good reasons for this; aside from the security considerations, being interrupted while doing something important by a badly behaving background application would not be fun! However, there are some limited use cases for starting processes that feature…

How to create an IdentityModel TokenResponse object instance for mocking purposes

InProgramming

IdentityModel is an open-source library developed by Dominick Baier and Brock Allen which does an excellent job of simplifying interactions with OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect servers. However, when it comes to unit testing, it can appear on the surface to be somewhat difficult to create certain objects that need to be instantiated on demand…

Getting the command line of a running process using C#

InProgramming

Every process on a Windows device features a ‘command line’ that may include one or more arguments or ‘switches’ that can affect the behaviour of the running program. While it is possible in a .NET application to specify the arguments to use before starting a new process, currently there isn’t an API that allows the…

How to create and install a .NET Core Windows Service

InProgramming

Windows Services offer a robust mechanism for hosting long-running background applications on Windows devices. These services are usually configured to start with the operating system and can be stopped and started on demand. They are ideal for processing background tasks as they do not show a user interface and therefore do not interfere with what…

Creating your first C# Azure Function using Visual Studio

InAPIs Programming Web

Azure Functions is an Azure cloud service that allows software developers to focus on writing code that reacts to events, without needing to concern themselves as much with the infrastructure that the code is running on. Azure Functions applications are serverless by nature and can scale to meet demand with minimal overhead and cost. There…

Category: Programming

Substituting Moq for NSubstitute

Taming Nullable Reference Types in C#

Getting the path to a C# member via a lambda expression

How to get the Local AppData directory for all Windows users within a .NET application

Subscribing to events dynamically using C#

Launching a GUI application from a Windows Service using C#

How to create an IdentityModel TokenResponse object instance for mocking purposes

Getting the command line of a running process using C#

How to create and install a .NET Core Windows Service

Creating your first C# Azure Function using Visual Studio

Extracting query performance statistics from a SQL Server database

Exploring ASP.NET Core Minimal APIs: Should I use them in production?

Substituting Moq for NSubstitute