Uncategorized – Page 5 – Clear Thinking in Data, Cloud, and AI

Using Shared Projects in ASP.NET

Shared projects are used to facilitate cross platform development. This allows you to reference an entire project as opposed to just a single assembly.

Shared project is a shred bucket of code. At compile time, any project that reference the shared project will have all of the files (including folder structure) and then they will be compiled. You wouldn’t see any separate DLL as you might have seen in PCL (Portable class libraries).

A shared project is not going to be compiled on its own. The code in the shared project is incorporated into assembly that reference it and compiled within that assembly.

Let’s create a shared project;

Create a class Math with a static method Add.

namespace SharedProject1
{
    public class Math
    {
        public static int Add(int x, int y)
        {
#if NETCOREAPP1_1
            return (x + y) + 3;
#else
            return (x + y) + 13;
#endif
        }
    }
}

Add SharedProject reference to your project. If your project is targeting .NET Core 1.1, the relevant piece of code in #if/#endif will run.

//.NET Core 1.1
SharedProject1.Math.Add(3, 4);      //return 10

//.NET Core 1.0
SharedProject1.Math.Add(3, 4);      //return 20

Here is some recommendation of using Shared Projects and Portable Class Libraries;

How the code is reused

Shared Projects: Source Code (All source code is available to your reference project)
PCL: Reference is available at Assembly level (for example MyLibrary.dll)

Compile time behavior

Shared Projects: All source code is copied into each referenced project and compiled there
PCL: Nothing new. Its compiled as usuall.

Visual Studio support

Shared Projects: Full Support
PCL: Each plateform is compiled separately. This can be accomplished thru IOC.

#IFDEF Support

Shared Projects: Full Support
PCL: Unsupported

.NET Framework Support

Shared Projects: Full Support
PCL: Limited

The core problem with shared project is difficulty of code testing because of conditional compilation directives. This in turn introduce errors that you wouldn’t know until you have actually compiled your application.

Resources

https://dev.to/rionmonster/sharing-is-caring-using-shared-projects-in-aspnet-e17

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30634753/what-is-the-difference-between-a-shared-project-and-a-class-library-in-visual-st

Send email in .NET Core using Mailkit and office 365

Using SmtpClient to send email .NET core is obsolete. The current recommendation is to use the MailKit library . Here is how to use it with the office 365 SMTP servers.

var message = new MimeMessage();
message.From.Add(new MailboxAddress("{from name}", "{from email address}"));
message.To.Add(new MailboxAddress("{to name}", "{to email address}"));
message.Subject = "{subject}";

message.Body = new TextPart("plain")
{
    Text = "{body}"
};

using (var client = new SmtpClient())
{
    await client.ConnectAsync("smtp.office365.com", 587, SecureSocketOptions.StartTls);
    await client.AuthenticateAsync("{from email address}", "{from password}");
    await client.SendAsync(message);
    await client.DisconnectAsync(true);
}

Difference between mit, gpl and apache software license

The MIT, BSD, and ISC licenses are “permissive licenses”. They are extremely short and essentially say “do whatever you want with this, just don’t sue me.”

The Apache license says “do whatever you want with this, just don’t sue me” but does so with many more words, which lawyers like because it adds specificity. It also contains a patent license and retaliation clause which is designed to prevent patents (including patent trolls) from encumbering the software project.

The GPL licenses (GPLv3, GPLv2, LGPL, Affero GPL) all contain some kind of share-alike license. They essentially say “if you make a derivative work of this, and distribute it to others under certain circumstances, then you have to provide the source code under this license.” The important thing to know here is that “derivative work” and “certain circumstances” both require some legal analysis to understand the meaning and impact for your project.

You can read more about it here;

Which License Should I Use? MIT vs. Apache vs. GPL

Backup calendars and contacts in outlook

Recently I had an issue where I need to clean up my inbox in outlook. I lost all of my calendars, schedules and contacts. sometime you learn it hard way 🙂

My emails were sync with exchange service provider so they stay the safe. All I wanted to do is to backup calendars and contacts. Here is a step by step guide;

Click on File -> Open & Export -> Import/Export.

Select “Export to a file” and Click Next.

Select “Outlook Data File (.pst)” and Click Next.

Select “Calendar” and click Next.

Select location and filename for exported file;

You can do the same with contacts.

Steps to perform when relocating to a different city/state

This is a brief list of steps to be performed when relocating to a different city/state.

Inform your current landlord about the date you are moving out
Disable/remove any rental auto payments
Inform your Power provider to disconnect power
Inform your Cable/Internet provider to disconnect service
Inform your postal service provider about your new mailing address

More to come..