AbpFeatures and AbpEditions - aspnetboilerplate

Can anyone please tell me what are the uses of the tables(AbpFeatures and AbpEditions) in Boilerplate Framework Application(Asp.net core with Angular).
Thanks in advance.

Edition Management:
Most SaaS (multi-tenant) applications have editions (packages) that have different features. Thus, they can provide different price and feature options to their tenants (customers).
Edition is a simple entity that represents an edition (or package) of the application.
Feature Management:
ASP.NET Boilerplate provides a feature system to make it easier. We can define features, check if a feature is enabled for a tenant and integrate feature system to other ASP.NET Boilerplate concepts (like authorization and navigation).
A feature can be:
"true" or "false" — enabled or disabled (for an edition or for a tenant), or
an arbitrary value.
Usage:
[RequiresFeature("ExportToExcel")]
public async Task<FileDto> GetReportToExcel(...)
{
// ...
}

Related

How to design front-end to handle multiple back-end versions

In my company, we're using Spring Boot to implement backend API and React to implement frontend including Web interface and Android/iOS apps.
Since our product is an Enterprise software, customers actually have to pay to get the latest backend API to deploy on their own servers. However, our mobile apps are regularly updated on the App Store. This leads to a situation where the mobile apps on end-users' devices may be the newer version while the backend API on the customer's machine is the older one. We plan to support up to 3 minor version backward, meaning FE 5.4 will support up to backend 5.2.
The backend does have an endpoint to return the current version number. However, I'm a bit clueless as to how our frontend implementation can maintain backward compatibility with older API versions as we add new features and may introduce breaking changes in backend API.
I completely understand there might not any beautiful solutions for this problem. I'm hoping if you've gone through this pain, you can share your experiences about what you've tried, the final approach that you took and the potential pitfalls to look out for.
I'm sure myself and other people who's running into this issue would be really grateful :).
Your solution will be similar to any frontend solution that uses Feature Toggle but I can already imagine that it will not be pretty.
Basically inside your code you'll have a lot of if/else statements or some form of wrapper that does the same underneath for every piece of UI/logic/functionality that is a breaking change on version upgrade.
I'd suggest that for every layers that you have (UI, logic, API call) you should start to have switches based on version returned by backend. You'll end up with a lot of redundant looking codes and a lot of codes that looks like this. (if you support only two versions. Use switch if you have more versions)
render() {
{version === "1.0.0" ? <VersionA /> : <VersionB/>}
}
You can however, write a utility method that wraps and returns different components based on versions. By doing that you can more easily remove components that you no longer need to support in the future.
const versionSwitcher = (version, ...Components) => {
switch (version) {
case "1.0.0":
return Components[0];
case "1.1.0":
return Components[1];
}
}
This of course, increases complexity throughout all layers but given your case I can't see it being simple. A good thing to do is to try to keep your own viewModel and never pass response from API directly into component. That reduces the coupling between API and your components and will make this a little easier.

Services.AddTransient() Vs Services.AddBot()

In the latest bot samples, we can see that bot is being added to services collection as below
services.AddTransient<IBot, MyBot>();
but in older samples, we saw below approach
services.AddBot<MyBot>(options => { });
Here I am trying to understand the benefits of adding bot using AddTransient() over using AddBot().
What I know is that internally AddBot uses AddTransient only, then why use AddTransient. Referred remarks section from this link.
You can see in the source code that the AddBot methods are used for automatically adding a bot adapter to DI in addition to the bot and for configuring bot-related options like credentials and error handling. The conventions for using the Bot Builder v4 SDK were very different when those samples were made, and the bot's configuration along with its credentials were loaded from something called a bot file. The current convention for using the SDK is much easier because it takes advantage of ASP.NET Core automatically loading the app's configuration from appsettings.json. Since we're not using AddBot anymore you'll notice that the adapter is added to DI explicitly, and you can configure things like error handling and middleware either by accessing the properties and methods of the adapter directly or by deriving your own adapter class, as seen in the samples.

.NET 4.5, EF 5 and MembershipProvider

Does anyone know if there is going to be created a default MembershipProvider to use with EF 5 (like SqlMembershipProvider and ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider) or we will still have to create custom ones (that is for Code First of course)?
Actually after the long comments and explanations it results that there will be a default MembershipProvider for EF and - guess what, guess what - it is called EFMembershipProvider. Here is a link.Now this is really cool because third party implementations of MembershipProvider will no longer be needed (or the respective manual implementation - it was kind of BIG and total overkill for small projects).
UPDATE
Currently it seems that this provider is not available. I do not know if it will be developed and included in the future either.
Since we are encouraged to use SimpleMembershipProvider and migrations when using EF Code First that is what I am doing now. You can also implement the ExtendedMembershipProvider, which requires a little bit more effort.
For me the best solution for now is to inherit SimpleMembershipProvider and modify only the things that I need (I am using most of the code from my previous implementation of MembershipProvider), for example logging with email or username.
I've implemented a CodeFirst MembershipProvider & Role with my Silversite CMS ASP.NET library, that can be found at silversite.codeplex.com. The library also supports multiple DbContexts for CodeFirst databases.
As far as I know though currently the implementation is broken, and I didn't have the time to fix it yet. Also Profile and Session providers still are lacking. But I've got the code from the MySql providers that should not be too hard to port.

What is the standard approach for setting up a Visual Studio 2010 solution for ASP.NET MVC 3 project

I am currently working on a ASP.NET MVC 3 project and I am setting up the solution file on VS2010.
I am not sure of what is the standard approach. I am using the following approach
Company.Dept.Data (contains the dbml file - Data Model)
Company.Dept.Business (Business logics)
Company.Dept.Web (contains ASP.NET MVC3 webapplication)
The first two are class libraries and the last one is MVC3 web application.
Anyother recommendations?
There is no single "standard" approach. It all depends on your project and what problems you are trying to solve with the software. Your proposed structure of having 2 class libraries and 1 web project is one way to go for sure.
If you are going to do any kind of Dependency Injection using an Inversion of Control container, you might also want to consider having an "API" project for interfaces and an "Impl(ementation)" project for concrete classes that fulfill the interface contracts.
To echo danludwig, there really is no standard. I prefer breaking up libraries and namespaces according to functionality. Company.Db is my library for interacting with the database, Company.Mail are my wrappers around the Postmark mail service, etc.
I then tend to group like libraries into single repositories. So the 'storage' repository in source control holds Company.Db, Company.Caching, Company.FileStorage, etc. I have another repository 'messaging' that holds Company.Mail and Company.SMS (for interacting with Twilio to send text messages). When I branch out with new apps or new services (maybe a WCF endpoint for mobile clients), I can just pull down the 'messaging' repository, and I have all my class libraries for communicating with the user.
An application then looks like
Company.Application.Webite
\Libraries\Messaging
\Libraries\Messaging\Company.Mail
\Libraries\Storage
\Libraries\Messaging\Company.Db
\Libraries\Messaging\Company.Caching
\Libraries\Web
...
Company.Application.Wcf
\Libraries\Messaging
\Libraries\Storage
\Libraries\Messaging\Company.Db
\Libraries\Messaging\Company.Caching
...
This way, whether someone registers via the site, or via the mobile app, Company.Mail.MailServices.SendWelcomeEmail() sends the exact same welcome email, and there's no code duplication.
Whether this works for you, or even makes sense, who knows. I've also changed this scheme a hundred times, trying to find a layout that works with my development style/workflow. I wouldn't worry or stress too much about it, because whatever you pick, you're going to find things you like about it, and you'll find things you hate about it. I sometimes fall into the trap of spending more time trying to make everything "perfect", than to just code and change things I don't like.

Update Custom Entities in MS CRM 4.0 via Custom Workflow

I have created a custom entity in MS CRM 4.0 and am trying to update a couple of the attributes via a custom worflow in .Net. I have read through several of the forums and blog posts and am still confused on how to access the custom entity and update some of their attributes.
I created a custom entity to replace how CRM was doing allotments as our company has some specific business rules that CRM wasn't doing. When a task is completed on an incident I want to update an attribute in the custom entity with the task duration. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
When using the CRM web service in a custom workflow, you'll need to use DynamicEntity objects. The workflow context webservice is just an ICrmService so it doesn't know about your specific customizations. There's a pretty sample here: http://www.stunnware.com/crm2/topic.aspx?id=CustomWorkflowActivity
I imagine you could also add the CRM web services as a web reference to your workflow project. Then you'd have strongly types objects for your custom entities. I've never done this for my custom workflows, but it works for other custom apps accessing CRM.
Choosing Dynamic Entities over WSDL in favour is always the better choice.
When you develop a piece of code, you are more flexible with your classes. You could use your piece of software in different contexts for different systems. That's the reason Dynamic Entities were invented.
It's very easy and you dont'have to use DynamicEntity. You have to go to Settings -> Customization -> Download WSDL. Take the wsdl and use it in your project. Now you have all your custom entities strongly typed. All you have to do is to write something like this:
Guid entityId = getEntityId();
new_yourCustomEntity entity = new new_yourCustomEntity();
entity.new_yourCustomEntityid = entityId;
entity.new_customProperty = "value";
CrmService crmService = new CrmService();
crmService.Update(entity);
Maybe what you really mean is Custom Workflow Activity? This involves writing your own .NET class to add functionality to the standard CRM WF in form of new step types. If what you want to do is just to update an attribute you don't really need this, even if it is on a custom entity. The Update record step does just this and allows dynamic values (coming from other entities) to be specified.
Hope it helps
Daniel

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