.Net Foundation On .NET, 2 Jul 2018

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From YouTube: New features in ASP.NET Web Forms

Description

ASP.NET Web Forms is a mature web application framework that comes included with the full .NET Framework.

In this episode, Program Manager Jeff Fritz (@csharpfritz) joins us to talk about two new features that are available to ASP.NET Web Forms developers; configuration builders and dependency injection. These features are both available with the 4.7.2 release of the .NET Framework.

02:25 - What are configuration builders?
05:10 - Configuration builder demo
13:11 - Dependency Injection support in Web Forms
15:44 - Dependency Injection demo
20:24 - Documentation and reference material

Learn more about these features through the links below.
Use Dependency Injection In WebForms Application: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/webdev/2018/06/05/use-dependency-injection-in-webforms-application/?WT.mc_id=ondotnet-channel9-cephilli
ConfigurationBuilder Class documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.configuration.configurationbuilder?view=netframework-4.7.1&WT.mc_id=ondotnet-channel9-cephilli
Web Forms Dependency Injection package for Unity: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.WebFormsDependencyInjection.Unity/?WT.mc_id=ondotnet-channel9-cephilli
Jeff's collection of ConfigurationBuilders: https://github.com/csharpfritz/Fritz.ConfigurationBuilders

A

In this episode of the on .net show,, we're going to have jeffrey fritz coming on to talk to us about some of the new features that are available today in asp.net web forms..

A

Welcome to another episode of on .net show and today,.

A

I have jeff fritz on.. How are you doing,, jeff?.

B

Hey,, it's good to see you, cecil., I'm doing well.

A

That's pretty good, man., so glad to have you on.

A

so,, for our guests that don't know who you are and what exactly you do,. Why don't you give us a little bit about,? Let us know what you do here at microsoft?.

B

Sure. so,, I'm a program manager on the .net team.

B

I'm focused primarily on community interaction,.

B

I do a lot of work with web forms and some of our other web application frameworks.

B

So, I help coordinate events, speak at a couple of events.. It's a pretty good time..

B

That's pretty cool.!.

A

So you mentioned web forms, and I know we have asp.net mvc..

A

We have asp.net core., we haven't been hearing too much about web forms. Lately..

A

Are we still working on that?? Are we still creating, doing more updates and releases for it?.

B

Oh yes, absolutely. so, web forms,, that's the old asp.net we've had since the very beginning,.

B

Where you have those asp, x, files,, asc, x, user controls hanging out there.

B

well,, we're continuing to develop and deploy new features for that with the system web capabilities right that dll that ships with .net framework, that everybody has on their windows. Machines.

B

so,, it's a pretty complete framework,.

B

But we are making updates to make sure that it's easy for folks to use with modern web capabilities and to also give them some routes,.

B

So they can take advantage of migration strategies to get into a .net core world. If that's where they want to get to..

B

Great,, that sounds pretty good.

A

So, you're, actually here to talk about some of those new features of web forms that we recently put out right? yeah, absolutely.. There were.

B

A couple of small things that we put out in .net framework 4.7.1 and we put out another one or two updates that are interesting in .net framework 4.7.2.

B

so, for folks that have the latest versions of the .net framework, you'll see these features both in your visual studio, developer packs and on the server for you. cool. sounds pretty good.

A

So,, let's talk about configuration builders.

A

I've seen some conversations about that and blog post about it,. But what exactly is it and what's the problem? That's it's trying to solve? sure., it's a good question, cecil.

B

So,, what we ran into is, particularly, as we saw .net core, be released.

B

They've got this great configuration mechanism where you can layer. Your configuration.

B

you've got several different configuration sources.

B

And you can pull together the unity of those various configurations, settings.

B

And use that for your application.

B

with .net framework, you can't really do that.

B

You have a app config file or you have a web config file. That's hanging out there.

B

it's xml format and, unlike .net core,.

B

You can't really get configuration from a third party source in jam. It into the configuration manager object without playing some games with those config files.

B

So, we wanted to make that easier and particularly,.

B

We wanted to make it easier for folks to inject things like environment variables,, so that when they deploy their existing asp.net, .net applications into a docker container,.

B

They can load up environment variables,, they get load up, docker settings or even pull settings out of an azure key vault and inject them in and replace any settings that are sitting in there.

B

Maybe your app settings section or your connection string section,, so that you've got one configuration you're. Pushing around.

B

should make things a lot. Easier.

A

That's sounds pretty good.. I remember a few years. Ago,.

A

I was working on different products and we had a similar concern where we had configurations that were in various xml files, and some of them were in databases, and whatnot..

A

We had to create these classes of these libraries to aggregate some of that stuff. Together.

A

So,, it's good to hear that we're going to get support for some of those type of scenarios. That's just out of the box. Now.

B

Yeah. in fact, out of the box,, we didn't define a specific provider.

B

For these third party configuration settings., we actually only deliver with the .net framework, an abstract interface..

B

We allow other folks to build providers as needed,.

B

That they can add into your application.

B

well,, you can add into your applications to enhance, as you need, be.

B

so, by default,. We made a couple of nuget packages available along with source code, to do environment, variables,, azure, key vault,.

B

Json files, and even a user secrets, xml file that we can hide elsewhere on disk,, just like the user secrets feature that we have in asp.net core.

A

Cool. so,, you have any demos that we can take a look at? oh, absolutely, have I got demos., let's get to it. all right.. You mentioned that this feature is available..

A

This particular feature is available in 4.7.1, correct?.

B

This feature is available in .net, 4.7.1 and later.

B

Okay. so,, you can update your application to .net framework.

B

4.7.1 and you can get access to this without changing any of your code..

B

This is strictly a configuration file change once you do that rebuild with 4.7.1.

B

Got it. so,. There are several configuration builders, like I mentioned out there available on nuget.org that you can download.

B

I want to show you two of them here.. The first one is the environment. Variable, configuration builder.. If I take a look at my nuget packages, here,.

B

Let's look at the installed ones named configuration builders., you can see. I have microsoft, configuration configuration builders, environment installed and I also have microsoft configuration configuration builders, azure installed..

B

When I install those, it automatically adds a section, definition to your web config file..

B

It will also do that for your app config file as well,, and it will add a configuration builder section here where we define which configuration builders we want to load up and have access to in our application.

B

Now, before I actually use these,.

B

Let me just show you the demo page, to evaluate and show you what's presented.

B

I have a default aspx in this sample project that just does a four each through configuration manager, app settings,.

B

All keys, and outputs the key,.

B

And then the value that it finds inside of configuration manager. so,. This is a standard api that we've had.

B

Since .net framework 1 to be able to work with our configuration.

B

but,, if I have these app settings by default, here,.

B

Some service that I want to connect out to, and some secret value. As my service key., I can start to reference my environment,.

B

Configuration builder by adding this attributes to the element that I want to work, with.

A

So, I specified we're going to modify this section with.

B

Config builders and then I give it the name of the config builder that I want to apply to it..

A

So, quick question about that: part.

A

so, on line 15,, I'm looking at app settings, and then there's a property called config builders, you set it to some value.. Can I have multiple configuration builders in that property?.

B

Oh, yes., you can comma delimit these.

B

And it will chain, together from left, to right.

B

The various values adding on in.

B

Just the same way that you do in asp.net core, where it last one and wins.

B

nice. so. oh,, yes. so,, let's, let's start with this.

B

So,, I have these two settings here in my project.

B

If I didn't specify a config builders argument, here, these values would be output to the screen..

B

Let's just start this, and we should see two different values pop up for my service id and service key coming out of.

B

Environment [inaudible] on my machine here.

B

There you go. fritz, desktop and.

B

Then really secret key hiding in an environment variable so that no one can see it.

B

They've been loaded, and I didn't have to make any changes, right?

B

nice. then,. The second one that I wanted to show is the azure key vault feature.

B

so,. We have azure key vault that we can specify.

B

I specified the name of my azure key vault, that's running out there in my azure active directory.

B

It's configured with a couple of settings and because I'm logged into visual studio, as you can see up, here,.

B

It will use those credentials to connect out to azure and.

B

Access my key vault that has this name and fetch values from it.

A

Now, this one looks a little bit different from the previous one, right? so,. This one now is taking some properties, right?, it's taking a vault name and a mode.

A

so,, I'm guessing as the configuration builders created,.

A

That you can specify, "hey,, I can add some of these extra values and it would go.

A

In there to configure your configuration builders so to speak.".

B

Absolutely. so,. If I had a json file that I wanted to load,, I could specify that filename in the definition of the config builder here.

B

That way,, I could load several different json files.

B

As different builder entries here with the exact same syntax.

B

but, in this case,, I'm passing properties of the vault name to connect to and this greedy mode.

B

This mode is actually a feature that many of our configuration builders have where we can say make it strict,.

B

Where it will only bring down values that match the properties that we're trying to replace,.

B

Or I can say greedy, which will go and get all of the values that are available out there and make those additional keys. Inside of my app settings.

B

So,, that's what I'm doing here is I'm going to say, "go get all of the settings that are available and, let's add them and create new keys inside of my app settings.".

B

Got it. so, I can switch to my azure key vault just by making,.

B

Not that change. that change.

B

Don't place it into the comment. all right.

B

So,, if I start now, it'll use like I said, the credentials that I use to log into visual studio to authenticate and bring back my data for.

B

All of the keys that are defined inside of the key vault that I called "summit demo".

B

There you go. so,, I have the same service id and service key,, but a greedy connected, my github password.

B

And some other configuration information that's stored out there in my key vault.

B

right. now,. I might not use this in my application, but that's the purpose of greedy,.

B

Is we'll bring everything back and we'll figure out what to do with it? Later.

B

that's pretty cool. so,! I like how easy it is.

A

It goes from, hey,. Let's take some local configuration from my web config file,, then I can easily switch it to be like,. Hey, well,, let's also include some stuff from an environment, variable. no,, it's not in my product,, but it's on the machine.

A

then,. You went even further now, right?. You took it up to another level and you took it all the way up to azure key vault,, which is like our secure storage facility.

A

For some of these applications, secrets, and keys,, and what not. absolutely., if you deploy.

B

Your application, then, to app service running in azure.

B

Well, if your app service application is authorized as.

B

An application in your active directory.

B

With access to the key vault,, it will be able to do the log in and automatically pull down those values as well.

B

So,, zero configuration., no secrets get saved to disk on your app server.

B

It's just the name of the vault to connect to.

A

I think that's very important, particularly for resource control purposes..

A

I don't want to have to check in my secrets into source control,, but now I can set up these configuration providers and then instead I can get those values from somewhere else..

A

I don't have to worry about sensitive information being stored. Unlike my source control, history.

B

Absolutely. saved on disk somewhere on a machine, that's been decommissioned and somebody finds.

B

yeah.. It's completely out of any control that you might have on it, right?.

B

We're only accessing what we need.

B

nice.. I really liked this feature.

A

You have another feature too, that you wanted to talk to us: about, right?.

B

Yes. so,, that other feature that we just.

B

Recently added is dependency injection.

A

So,, what is dependency injection for all of us who might not know what that is exactly.

B

So, dependency injection is the capability of.

B

Our applications of our classes to have passed to them,.

B

Passed and typically through a constructor,, the objects that they need in order to provide business value.

B

Yeah. so, for example,, I have a page here.. This is a normal system. Web ui page.

B

That has a product repository class on it.

B

It's starting up,, it's creating a new product, repository,.

B

And then I'm using model binding in this method here on lines 22-25 to fetch data.

B

Fetch a list of products from that repository as.

B

A queryable object that the page itself will use as part of a grid view,.

B

Right there in the select method to populate the grid.

A

Wow,, so we have mdin model binding available now in web forms.

A

model binding's been around since asp.net 4.5.

B

So, yes, model binding, is very much available.

B

All of our data bound controls have these method attributes,, all of them like, select, method,, insert method,, update, method, and delete method, that are pointers in our aspx.

B

Files back to a method here inside of our code, behind.

A

Right. so, now with dependency injection., that's something very common that we see a lot with our mvc applications where asp.net core applications.

A

to the point that it's actually baked in and it's a part of the core framework. so,. It's really good to see some of these features that are coming into web forms., right. absolutely.. This is.

B

Another one of those features that's helping to give you the ability to do some refactoring now.

B

Push things like your database access, layer,.

B

Out into a separate class library.

B

have it injected at run, time,.

B

So that it's outside of the web forms project, and you can start to move that into perhaps a .net standard class library,, where, when you do your .net core rewrite,.

B

You can reuse that code.

A

Nice. well, let's stop talking about it..

A

Let me see how this work. right. so,, I'm doing that product repository here.

B

But, really, what I want to do is pass that in on a constructor.

B

so, I'll use the c tor snippet to generate my constructor here..

B

My product repository implements the I-product repository interface, and it returns just a pair of nonsense. Product objects that return the names, foo and bar.

B

so,. Let's bring in an I-product repository.

B

Here, I-product repository and I'll just call it repo.

B

I'll specify that, this repository is.

B

That repository class that was passed in and I can get rid of this initialization here.

B

The phrase new is glue is something that.

B

We're familiar with whereby putting a new here,.

B

We're tying that implementation of a product repository to this class.

B

so,. This changes things to make it a little bit more loosely coupled..

B

The last piece of this is we actually need to.

B

Connect this product repository object.

B

To a dependency injection, container.

B

so,, it knows how to turn this request for an eye product repository interface into.

B

A concrete product repository and I have.

B

That over here in my unity, config class.

B

So,, I have a simple configure method here that creates a new unity container and it registers the type eye product repository.

B

Should deliver a product repository., that's garden, variety, unity, container, configuration,,.

B

But this is the glue here.

B

the web object. Activator is a new unity, config.

B

It's a new one of these things.

B

now, "web object. Activator" is.

B

An eye service provider that you need to implement if you're going to go all the way down and create one of.

B

These classes for your favorite dependency injection, container.

B

The one method you need to implement is get service for a given type returns or map object.

B

So, all we're doing is saying. Look at that surface type, that's requested, which will be this page and.

B

Then we're going to go down and say: look at the constructors.

B

if the constructor has parameters where.

B

All the parameter types are registered, node container,, resolve.

B

container, go build me up one of those things, in this case,, my default page.. If we can't do that,, then we're just going to do a standard activator, create instance of that object.

B

Now, what's great about this, is I'm not coupled.

B

To just a system web ui, page.

B

This also works for user controls and other custom controls inside your application.

A

Got it. does that also work for handlers and modules per se? If I wanted to do this, in-house?.

B

Absolutely., it will work for a-s-h-x files,.

B

It'll work for asmx files,, your soap services.

B

So you have a simple implementation.

B

That works really across the entire system web-based framework.

B

This doesn't work with mvc, where you're building up controllers there or web api that, there's a separate configuration for those things,, but this will get you in with that base level of system. Web capabilities., nice. so,, let's fire it up and just show that it does, in fact, return our object.

A

So whatever you like, while that's booting up,, what I really like about this is so to just register it,.

A

All you need to do is just assign it to that web object, activator and then the system would.

A

Just automatically pick it up like I don't have a separate thing I have to do in global.asax or anything like that..

A

It could just kind of happened in that space.

B

It just happens. we load up, and I got my two products coming back inside, of a very simple grid on the default page., so right..

B

The idea here is to make that rearchitecting.

B

That many of our customers want to do of their applications,, so they can consider a .net core,, a .net standard class library.. Make that easier to do by allowing you to.

B

Refactor and take advantage of modern dependency injection capabilities.

B

Nice. so,, if I wanted to learn a little bit more about.

A

This feature, and also even the configuration build us feature,. Where can I go to get some reference materials, maybe even see some samples about it? sure.? Let me go to,.

B

I have a blog post here on the asp.net blog.

B

If you go to blogsmsdn.com/webdev.

B

This is called use. Dependency injection in a webforms application., go ahead and check this out and there's another sample here that you can see. That shows you how to upgrade to .net framework 472 and apply.

B

These changes and take.

B

Advantage of dependency injection with unity.

B

for configuration, builders, there's an entry in the docs at docsmicrosoft.com.

B

If you look up the configuration builder class,.

B

There's a complete article here about how to write your own configuration builder, as well as, how to do the configuration.

B

Inside of your web config or app config, class, file.

B

And then links to our existing configuration builders that are available for you on nuget.

A

Just like the dependency injection stuff, like both of these should be pretty easy to create my own. If I wanted to, right?.

B

Absolutely. I've taken some time and I've built.

B

My own configuration builders to read from things like an ini, file, right?, those ini files that people loved so much before windows, 95., there's still a bunch of them out there and people like to be able to read from those as well..

B

So that's one option.. I even wrote one to read from an rss endpoint., so you could publish.

B

Here's the configuration that I want on a web server somewhere as an rss file and be able to read that in and configure your application.

B

From a central location like that off server, entirely.

B

So pretty interesting.

A

So,, if I have an existing windows, forms application.

A

And I upgrade to 4.7.1,: do I have to do anything special,? Do I have to pull in any packages or should these features just light up and be available for me?.

B

If you upgrade to 471 with windows forms,, you will need to update,.

B

To install those packages for configuration builders and update your config file.

B

Now,, installing those packages doesn't mean you need to recompile,. You just need to get the dlls into the bin folder with your project., we'll use reflection to load up those capabilities,.

B

Write the application startup and apply that configuration to your application.

A

Cool. well,: this is awesome and thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about this features. Yeah.

B

Oh, thanks so much for having me.. I really appreciate the time to share these features with folks that are interested in modernizing and taking advantage of some of these capabilities that .net framework hasn't had until recently.

A

Yeah,, this has definitely been awesome., so this is another episode of the on .net show.. Thank you all for watching.