Tag: .NET Core

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…

InSecurity
Many options are available when it comes to encrypting sensitive data via a .NET application. However, while the System.Security.Cryptography namespace provides a plethora of different encryption algorithms, many of these are obsolete and should be avoided if possible. It is therefore important to keep abreast of the latest recommendations, especially when it comes to security-critical…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

In my previous post, I introduced Azure Functions and walked through the process of creating and debugging your first C# function using Visual Studio. This time, I’m covering the topic of deployment and how functions can be published to Azure. After reading this article, you’ll understand how to publish an Azure Function to Azure using…

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…