SignalR cross domain with CORS

I've recently had to create a demo for a SignalR project I'm working on. SignalR is awesome when it comes to enabling real-time communications for your application. The amazing thing about SignalR, apart from how easy it is to use, is that it works across many different application types and platforms. You can use it on website, desktop apps and even mobile apps (both native and Xamarin). If you want to know more, have a look at the [official website](http://www.asp.net/signalr/overview" target="_blank) However, as with everything else, sometimes things don't work as …[read more]

Create Electron applications with Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is by far my favourite editor. I've got nothing against Sublime or Atom, but the first one is not free and the second one tends to get a bit slow. I use all 3, in case you think of accusing me of favouritism, but my Go-To editor is VSCode. One of its biggest strengths is obviously the debugging experience. This week I decided to start rewriting my password application (PasswordDefence) with Electron. This will mean that once finalized, I will have a mobile and desktop presence and it also gives me a good opportunity to play …[read more]

Export your stored passwords from Chrome

Posted in tools

Today, another massive security breach made the news. This time, it was about the breach of 000webhost a free hosting provider. Troy Hunt did a good write up about the incident, including his investigation and the event timeline, in this [blog post](http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/10/breaches-traders-plain-text-passwords.html" target="_blank). The compromise involves over 13 million accounts which were acquired during a recent hack. I've never used their service and my account is not in there. If you have, I would highly recommend you change your passwords. I would also recommend that you register on Troy's …[read more]

Using a dynamic DataReader with ADO.NET

I've recently had to do some data parsing, pulling data from a CSV file, performing some validation and then dumping a series of SQL commands for our data population scripts. I know there are a myriad ways to do this but I wanted to do this as quickly and easy as possible. The process is quite simple: Open the file using a StreamReader Use the awesome [CsvReader](https://github.com/MikeStall/DataTable" target="_blank) Map csv data to object ids from database Output SQL statements and error log To make things fast, I load all the necessary data …[read more]

Generate Guids with PowerShell or ScriptCs

There are many ways to generate GUIDs. You can use one of the many free websites or you can write your own (quick) script to do it. If you want to create your own script, there are 3 easy approaches: PowerShell ScriptCs Uuidgen.exe The first two are very powerful and versatile and can do a lot more than just generating GUIDs. The 3rd one is a dedicated utility for generating GUIDs only. PowerShell PowerShell is first as it's the easiest of the 2. Easiest to get started, that is. PowerShell is already installed on your Windows machine. Just bring …[read more]

ASP.NET MVC WebAPI - Optional parameters

[ASP.NET WebAPI](http://www.asp.net/web-api "target="_blank) is a powerful tool for creating APIs quickly and efficiently in .NET. In fact, it takes minimal effort to expose your data through WebAPI though this is both a curse and a blessing. Blessing because it's so easy, curse because you need to be very careful of what you expose. You need to ensure that you're not exposing unwanted information and only provide authenticated access when necessary. Securing WebAPI is a big subject so I'll leave that for another post. Today, I'll show you how to create WebAPI …[read more]

CodeCraftCon Glasgow - a tech conference with a twist

A couple of weeks ago I had the fortune to speak at [CodeCraftCon](https://ti.to/codecraftconf/summer-2015" target="_blank) in Glasgow, UK. How very fortunate as the venue was only 15 mins away from where I live! But this was not the only reason why the event was such a success. The conference was great, the location fantastic, the food extremely tasty and the overall outcome exceeded people's expectations. I greatly applaud and support events like this which can benefit the local developer community. CodeCraftCon was the first event I attended that the format was wildly different …[read more]

Asking technical questions at conferences

Oh man! This is some subject! Where does one even begin? This blog post was triggered by the following picture that came across my twitter timeline this morning. And it got me properly ragging! If you run through this flowchart, then the chances of asking a question are very close to none. Most people that attend conferences, they do it because they want to learn! If you've ever been a delegate to a technical/development conference and you chose to attend a specific talk, then you most likely belong to one these categories: You know a bit about the subject …[read more]