extRS Portal: a modern SSRS client

ExtRS Portal provides a blueprint for extending the functionality of Reporting Services 

 

extRS (pronounced, "extras") is a modern SSRS client for distributing and reading reports; with some extras. A demo of the app is linked here: https://extrs.net

   

The audience is SSRS report users (you know, the people you need to justify having enterprise reporting in the first place). So things like applying item-level RS security, managing users, and adding, editing and deleting SSRS catalog items and other system-level properties are not part of this client- at least not yet.

The aim here is to make SSRS at least slightly more interesting, accessible and useable for information consumers. This particuliar deployment of the extRS.Portal web client is connected to a report server with custom authentication (extRSAuth) which gets passed the normally required "Windows authentication" hamstring of the default SSRS installation. 

This wrapper and extension UI not only improve the user authentication experience and dynamism of SSRS parameter behaviors in the UI but also provide SSRS admins and other users with rich enterprise reporting usage and delivery data.

Enabled are the most of the features contained in Reporting Service's built-in Report Portal at /reports.

I have disabled some things like deleting and uploading items for the sake of keeping my demo of the app small and simple.

The source code can be found here: https://github.com/sonrai-LLC/extRS

Using Azure Key Vault Secrets in ASP.NET Core

This is, in my opinion, one of the coolest features of Azure. Azure Key Vault is a space in Azure where you can add certificates and keys for strings and cryptographic keys that you want to keep safe and don't want inside source control, etc.

Azure Key Vault is like LastPass for your ASP.NET apps- set it and forget it

I've worked with the process for managing keys in AWS and in my experience (each usage/implementaiton is different), AWS Secrets is a slightly less simple process. (meaning it is pretty simple too, but I'm partial to Azure).

To enable storing Secrets in Azure, you first create an Azure Key Vault in your Azure account. Then you add keys (for instance the clientID and secretKey for an API your apps use or an artifact repository URI or database connection strings, etc.).

Both SSL certs and your own custom secret keys can be stored in Azure Key Vault

Once the keys are created, you configure Azure KeyVault for your application in appSettings as such:

 .ConfigureAppConfiguration((context, config) =>  
       {  
         var azureServiceTokenProvider = new AzureServiceTokenProvider();  
         var keyVaultURI = "https://myvault.vault.azure.net/";  
         var keyVaultClient = new KeyVaultClient(new KeyVaultClient.AuthenticationCallback(azureServiceTokenProvider.KeyVaultTokenCallback));  
         cfg.AddAzureKeyVault(keyVaultURI, new DefaultKeyVaultSecretManager());  
       });  

his is where you configure you Azure Key Vault in an ASP.NET Core app

And once wired up, you can refer to your keys from that app- both on-prem and in the cloud (it uses SSL for the transfer) just as you would reference an appettings value through an IConfiguration object a la:

 val keyVal = _configuration["mySuperSecretKeyInAzureKeyVault"];                                  

Reference: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/key-vault/

Localization in ASP.NET Core using Resource (.resx) files

Localization in ASP.NET Core works much the same way as it did in legacy ASP.NET

You need only create .resx files with your translations reference them with an instance of IStringLocalizer<YourControllerName> that you can add to your controller method that contains the model that will use and present the translations to the UI.

First, add the below to ConfigureServices() or similiar method in Startup.cs or Program.cs:

       services.Configure<RequestLocalizationOptions>(options =>  
       {  
         options.SetDefaultCulture("en-US");  
         options.AddSupportedCultures("en-US", "es-CO", "fr-CA");  
         options.AddSupportedUICultures("en-US", "es-CO", "fr-CA");  
       });  

Next add resource (.resx) files (in this example for default American English, Spanish (Colombia), and French (Canada))

Your default .resx will look like this (same language for keys and values); make translations for the Values of es-CO and fr-CA

Now, the results - the translations, the latter two after changing browser default language to es-CO and fr-CA

Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/fundamentals/localization?view=aspnetcore-6.0