Category: How To | Page 12

How to Use System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager on .NET CORE

When you need to convert an existing .NET Framework Console application to .NET Core, there’s one pending question that is kept being asked. Can you still use the System.Configuration and App.config (XML) configuration instead of using the new Appsettings.json file instead?

There’s always a need for a most robust configuration file and with JSON, it offers more flexibility and scalability but it doesn’t make sense to use it for a console application that only need to read one or two values as parameters from the *.config file.

As an example on this particular case, the console file just need a data of which file to look for based on a date.

App.config

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <startup>
        <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.8"  />
    </startup>
  <appSettings>
    <!-- Date value must be in mm/dd/yyyy format. -->
    <add key="Rundate" value="mm/dd/yyyy"  />
  </appSettings>
</configuration>

Running a .NET Core console application can expedite the runtime which will improve the completion time of the batch job and also as it’s leaner it will have a lower operating cost. Moreover, .NET Core is the future of .NET so we’re future proofing the processor.

So how do we use the same App.config file for a .NET Core application?

Setup the System.Configuration

From your Visual Studio, open the Package Manager Console by going to Tools menu, then pick NuGet Package Manager. You will see the window open with the following initial message and PM> prompt.

  Each package is licensed to you by its owner. NuGet is not responsible for, nor does it grant any licenses to, third-party packages. Some packages may include dependencies which are governed by additional licenses. Follow the package source (feed) URL to determine any dependencies.
 
  Package Manager Console Host Version 4.9.2.5706
 
  Type 'get-help NuGet' to see all available NuGet commands.
 
  PM>

Visual Studio NuGet Package Manager Console

If you check the nuget.org website for System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager, you can just copy the command line (just substitute the version number you want to use).
```
  PM> Install-Package System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager -Version 4.5.0
```
Or if you want to use the latest, just click on the Copy button and paste it on your Package Manager Console window.
Once it’s installed, don’t forget to add using System.Configuration directive in your code.

Open App.config file and remove the block so it will look like the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <appSettings>
    <!-- Date value must be in mm/dd/yyyy format. -->
    <add key="Rundate" value="mm/dd/yyyy"  />
  </appSettings>
</configuration>

Test the program.

This is just a simple way to convert your existing .NET Framework console application to .NET CORE without complicating the existing configuration.

How to Start Observer from Erlang or Elixir Shell

Observer is a graphical tool for observing the characteristics of Erlang systems. Observer displays system information, application supervisor trees, process information, ETS tables, Mnesia tables and contains a front end for Erlang tracing.

As Elixir and Erlang both run on the same VM (Erlang VM or also known as BEAM), Observer can be run from either within Erlang shell or Elixir’s. The only tricky part is there’s a slight difference in the syntax on how to launch it.

Erlang

Eshell V10.2 (abort with ^G)
1> observer:start().
ok
2>

Notice the period at the end of the command for Erlang.

Elixir

iex(1)> :observer.start
:ok
iex(2)>

Please read the link provided below for more details and also on how to run Observer from a standalone node to minimize the impact of the system being observed.

How to Check Installed .NET Core Version

This is one way to determine what version of .NET Core is installed on your machine (or if it’s not installed):

Launch Windows PowerShell.

Runtime

(dir (Get-Command dotnet).Path.Replace('dotnet.exe', 'shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App')).Name

SDK

(dir (Get-Command dotnet).Path.Replace('dotnet.exe', 'sdk')).Name

In the following example, you can see that .NET Core 2.1.2 Runtime is installed, but the SDK is not installed with the following error message:

dir : Cannot find path 'C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk' because it does not exist.
At line:1 char:2
+ (dir (Get-Command dotnet).Path.Replace('dotnet.exe', 'sdk')).Name
+  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk:String) [Get-ChildItem], ItemNotFoundExcept
   ion
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PathNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetChildItemCommand
 
PS C:\Windows\system32>

Otherwise, it will look more like the next screenshot:

Another Way

There’s another way to accomplish the same thing with a much simpler command and this works on either Windows or macOS.

Depending on your operating system, launch either Windows PowerShell or Terminal.
Runtime
```
dotnet --list-runtimes
```
SDK
```
dotnet --list-sdks
```

Installed .NET Core versions for both Runtime and SDK from PowerShell

Windows PowerShell

macOS Terminal

When you see more than one entries, that means you have several versions installed and actually that’s the advantage of using .NET Core, you can have different versions installed side-by-side. The latest version is the last version number at the bottom of the result.

If you need a way to check the installed version of .NET Framework instead, check the link here.

How to Setup HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) on IIS

HTTP Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) response header is used to tell browsers that the particular website should only be accessed solely over HTTPS. This is a powerful feature that is easy to implement to mitigate the risks for the communication to be intercepted by hackers and keep your website visitors safe.

Enabling HTTP Strict Transport Security on IIS

See the steps below to enable HSTS on IIS:

Launch IIS Manager.
On the left pane of the window, click on the website you want to add the HTTP header and double-click on HTTP Response Headers.
In HTTP Response Headers window, click on Add… on the right pane and type in Strict-Transport-Security for Name and max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload for Value and click OK.The max-age value 63072000 is the number of seconds for the duration of two years. You need to enter a value of at least one year.

Now you can verify if the header is delivered correctly by running a curl command.

curl -I https://www.itnota.com

You should see that very header listed among other entries:

Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains; preload

That’s all there is to utilize HSTS on IIS.

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How to Deploy Hugo Static Website to IIS Using Git

Continuing the posts on Hugo website tutorial, after all the setup is done, the question now is about static site hosting. The reality is hosting a static website is very easy so you have a lot of flexibility in choosing your hosting and platform. In fact, you can use Github, Bitbucket or Gitlab to host your static website.

This post will show you how you can host your static website on IIS server using a git-push.

Prerequisites

Make sure IIS is setup. If you haven’t done so, make sure you check out the post to install IIS on Windows 10 which could be applied for Windows Server as well.
You need to have Hugo installed on your system. Check out this post if you still need to install Hugo.
Install Git. This process is also very straightforward, just head to Git website and follow its instructions to install it. You might also want to customize Git to work with your favorite text editor.If you decided to use Visual Studio Code, check out this post as the setup might be useful for editing and also publishing your Hugo website.
You have already created a Hugo new site in a folder and you have already committed all the files with Git with a .gitignore file which has at the minimum the following entry:
```
# Exclude folder
public/

# OS
[Tt]humbs.db
.DS_Store
```

For this exercise, I have my laptop as the source where I install all the tools and to write and generate the static website. For the IIS host, it will be a Windows 10 VM that can be mapped from the laptop. You can substitute the mapping with SSH for a different hosting but the principle is the same.

Now that we get all the prerequisites and objective out of the way, here are the steps to setup our environment:

Hugo/Git Public Folder Setup

1. Important: Hugo publish the website to a sub-folder public, so we also need to Git initialize and commit all the files in sub-folder public separately from its parents folder. Remember, we exclude the public folder in .gitignore file (see the prerequisites). So we’re tracking the published website separately. It is from within this public folder that we do all the setup described below.
2. On your target server, setup a folder that you can use as a temporary repository. In this example, a folder C:\inetpub\Git\hugo-repo was created for this purpose.
3. We will publish the static content to default folder C:\inetpub\wwwroot.
4. From within Git Bash and within your Hugo public folder, add the temporary repository as a remote repository by typing the following command:
```
$ git remote add prod //MACHINENAME/c$/inetpub/Git/hugo-repo
```
5. From within Git Bash, go to the remote repository to initialize it:
```
$ cd //MACHINENAME/c$/inetpub/Git/hugo-repo

$ git init --bare
```
6. Go to the repo folder and open the hooks folder and create a new text file called post-receive (do not put any file extension) and edit it with the following code:
```
#!/bin/bash

git --work-tree=//MACHINENAME/c$/inetpub/wwwroot --git-dir=//MACHINENAME/c$/inetpub/Git/hugo-repo checkout -f
```

If this sounds complicated, don’t worry about it as you only need to set this up once and forget about it.

Now every time you are ready to publish your Hugo website (i.e., by running the command “hugo”), go to your public folder, commit all the changes in Git, just do a Git push to prod:

$ git push prod master

The website will be automagically pushed to your IIS PROD and ready for public consumption.

We use this same exact method to publish an intranet site within our company. If there’s any step in this explanation is not clear, leave a comment below and I will try to improve the step-by-step guide in this post.

Downloads

Visual Studio Code
Git
Hugo

« Previous Page

How to Use System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager on .NET CORE

App.config

Setup the System.Configuration

Further Reading

How to Start Observer from Erlang or Elixir Shell

Erlang

Elixir

Further Reading

How to Check Installed .NET Core Version

Another Way

Further Reading

How to Setup HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) on IIS

Enabling HTTP Strict Transport Security on IIS

Buy me a coffee?

Further Reading

How to Deploy Hugo Static Website to IIS Using Git

Prerequisites

Hugo/Git Public Folder Setup

Further Reading

Downloads

Recent Posts

App.config

Setup the System.Configuration

Further Reading

Erlang

Elixir

Further Reading

Another Way

Further Reading

Enabling HTTP Strict Transport Security on IIS

Buy me a coffee?

Further Reading

Prerequisites

Hugo/Git Public Folder Setup

Further Reading

Downloads

Recent Posts

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