You need to eat your own dog food

I recently realized how useless my custom .NET method, "Sonrai.ExtRS.ReferenceDataService.GetGoogleNews(string searchTerm)", really was.

I had referenced Sonrai.ExtRS via Nuget and began trying to use it to improve the display in scrolling news links, in another application I maintain, tickertapes.net.   

It was useless! I mean a complete waste of code. It returned potentially useful data related to the searchTerm parameter- data from the GoogleNews API. But that is about it. It literally returned the entire XML response. 🤦‍♂️

This was the raw oil, but not the refined gasoline a consumer of a Nuget package expects...

I was parsing all this XML in the tickertapes.net app (why I do not know or care to remember), and so all the work necessary to wrangle the XML response to produce the needed news link collection was on the consumer of the Sonrai.ExtRS Nuget package- not good!

What the Nuget library should do, is all the work. What it should return, to be actually useful, is something structured like a collection of strings, each one representing a single news article, with the news headline being the text for the news article link.

And so I moved back to Sonrai.ExtRS to correct this unfortunate oversight.  

  public static async Task<List<string>> GetGoogleNewsWithLinks(string search)  
  {  
    HttpClient client = new HttpClient();  
    var content = await client.GetStringAsync(string.Format("https://news.google.com/rss/search?q={0}", search));  
    var parser = new HtmlParser();  
    var document = parser.ParseDocument(content);  
    var newsItems = document.All.Where(m => m.LocalName == "title").ToList();  
    var linkItems = document.All.Where(x => x.LocalName == "link").ToList();  
    var newsLinkItems = new List<string>();  
    for (int i = 0; i < newsItems.Count; i++)  
    {  
      newsLinkItems.Add("<a href='" + linkItems[i].NextSibling!.NodeValue + "' target='_blank'>" + newsItems[i].InnerHtml + "</a>");  
    }  
    return newsLinkItems;  
  }  

And this provides the Nuget client with something it can actually use, "turnkey"/out-of-the-box.

A list of HTML links which we can actually use; this is more like it.

The moral of the story is one that is as old as business and manufacturing: you must eat your own dog food. If there are problems or areas that need attention it is best that you find this information out before your product is released into the wild and a customer discovers the bug (or in this case, the uselessness), thus sullying your reputation as a business and software provider.

Test, test, test- always unit and/or integration test every user interaction and data movement for every story/path imaginable or support-able.

But there is nothing that replaces simply using your own product the way it is used by real users. And really using it for the purpose it was made. What you discover may help you shore up previously unknown problems and/or inspire you to make something useful that you would never otherwise think of, unless you were thinking from a user's perspective.

Reference: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Sonrai.ExtRS

PS: Imagine if James Newton-King never used NewtonSoft.Json for his own de/serializations? Or if Stack Overflow never used Dapper for the SO app/site? You need to use your creations right at the ground level (as a user/client) to verify that the functionality you designed in the abstract exactly matches how things will play out in concrete reality. Thoughts.. 💭

Social Authentication in ASP.NET Core MVC

A common modern convenience for apps is the ability to choose to authenticate and create an account based on credentials from an existing service that most people have (ie. Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, GitHub, etc.). in this post I will walk through the configuration of social authentication for Google and LinkedIn accounts.

Setting up social authentication in ASP.NET Core is a lot easier than you might think...

Before implementing this feature you will need to register for a Google and a LinkedIn developer account which will then give you access to the 2 values that make the magic of this built-in authentication possible: clientKey and clientSecret.

Important(!): you will also want to register the Callback/Redirect URLs for each social authentication as shown below. This redirect URL below is for my project running on localhost:44396 obviously ("/signin-google" is the path you want to append to your app root for Google and "/signin-linkedin" for LinkedIn):

Once you have this setup, you will be able to wire them up in the Startup.cs ConfigureServices() method of an ASP.NET Core 3 MVC Web Application ie:

  public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)  
     {  
       services.AddDbContext<ApplicationDbContext>(options =>  
         options.UseSqlServer(  
           Configuration.GetConnectionString("DefaultConnection")));  
       services.AddDefaultIdentity<IdentityUser>(options => options.SignIn.RequireConfirmedAccount = true)  
         .AddEntityFrameworkStores<ApplicationDbContext>();  
       services.AddControllersWithViews();  
       services.AddRazorPages();  
       services.AddAuthentication()  
       .AddGoogle(o =>  
       {  
         o.ClientId = "[YourGoogleClientId]";  
         o.ClientSecret = "[YourGoogleClientSecret]";  
       })  
       .AddLinkedIn(o =>  
       {  
         o.ClientId = "[YourLinkedInClientId]";  
         o.ClientSecret = "[YourLinkedInClientSecret]";  
       });  
       // Add application services.   
       services.AddMvc();  
     }  

Now you just have to:

• Create your ASP.NET Core 3 MVC Web Application project with Identity options as below

• Install a couple Nuget packages for Google OAuth2 and Linked OAuth respectively

• Call "Update-Database" from Nuget Package Manager Console

• Modify Startup.cs

To implement this feature for your users you only need follow a couple steps when setting up the project (whether ASP.NET MVC or the newer ASP.NET Core MVC) to enable some builtin identify and authentication handling after which you can configure and customize to fit your app's particular custom authentication needs. Follow the images below for proper installation of the required 2 Nuget packages, the db command, etc.

First, make sure you create your ASP.NET Core MVC project with "Individual User Accounts" radio button selection and "Store user accounts in app" dropdown selection as follows:

Change Authentication to use Individual User Accounts- this sets up the required boilerplate template code

You will add this Nuget package for LinkedIn authentication

You will add this Nuget package for Google authentication

Next you will need to create the database objects (ASPNET app auth db and tables) via "Update-Database" Package Manager Console command

Finally, modify Startup.cs ConfigureServices() method as shown in the snippet above. Compile and give it a whirl.

And that is all there is to it. Strangely there is not a lot of documentation on exactly how to do this and what can cause it to not work; I spent over an hour debugging what turned out to be a not-so-obvious issue (in my case I was following instructions that erroneously suggested I inject unneeded services to the services.AddAuthentication() instantiation in the snippet of Startup.cs above).

If your keys and Callback URLs are correct you will be able to authenticate to Google and LinkedIn

Once you have registered your social account, you can then log in with it and you will see the following (notice "Hello!...." and "Logout")

If you are like me and do not want to keep to adding yet more and more credentials to LastPass, your users probably don't either. Implementing Social Authentication is a powerful tool that you can leverage with relative ease in ASP.NET Core 3 MVC Web apps.

If you have questions on implementing this or just need some help and general guidance, feel free to comment or drop me an email at colin@sonrai.io


GitHub: https://github.com/cfitzg/DotNetSocialAuth


References:

http://codereform.com/blog/post/asp-net-core-2-1-authentication-with-social-logins/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/mvc/overview/security/create-an-aspnet-mvc-5-app-with-facebook-and-google-oauth2-and-openid-sign-on

https://ankitsharmablogs.com/authentication-using-linkedin-asp-net-core-2-0/  

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53654020/how-to-implement-google-login-in-net-core-without-an-entityframework-provider

Customize SSRS Stylesheet

This is an easy thing to do, especially if you are well-versed in CSS/DOM designing.

1). Go to this location and open up HtmlViewer.css in your favorite text editor:

2). Edit/override styles however you see fit. You can change almost all of the styles on the SSRS toolbar:

(before)

(change made)

(after)

3). If you want to point to different stylesheets for different report executions (ie. if you need security and want to hide the Save or Print button from some users), you can easily do that by adding the filename of your own custom stylesheet to the rc:Stylesheet parameter in the SSRS Request URI a la:

Other things like client-side scripting can be done to extend the Report Viewer UI further, but doing that sort of "functionality" integration is not well documented. If you want complete control over your Reporting Services app UI, take a look at the Report Server web service: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/reporting-services/report-server-web-service/report-server-web-service

Happy Reporting!