Has anyone seen any good examples of how I can use MVC3 and TableStorage with Azure account validation. Everything I look at seems to still be ASP.net or just a very basic example. I am surprised the Windows Azure site doesn't include more MVC examples.
What exactly do you need and what do you mean by "Azure account validation"?
As for Storage - the Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient.dll is a single assembly with common wrapping types around the Storage API. There is nothing technology specific. You can use storage client in any .NET assembly (well, not in Silverlight directly). But all operations over Windows Azure Storage are performed the same way regardless of whether it is a ASP.NET application, or MVC site, or WPF application, or WinForms application. So you may take the Azure Storage related code in your MVC application and use it as is. You just need an MVC3 Web Role, which is a standard and available project template since Windows Azure SDK 1.5.
Related
I put together some code for accessing CRM using the DLL's provided in the SDK download and tried out both the early binding approach and late binding approach.
What I'd like to do is in addition to having some custom entities that my users will access in Dynamics (through the Dynamics UI in the cloud), I also want to build some Android apps that talk to Dynamics.
My understanding is that I can talk to Dynamics from Android via REST (assuming I properly handle the authentication and getting tokens using ADAL libraries since my Dynamics instances run on the Microsoft cloud) or I can use the SDK with .NET as a middle-tier.
What's the recommended approach? Is there a best practice? When would I use the DLL's provided in the SDK and maybe wrap them in my own Web API vs. connecting to Dynamics directly via REST?
Please help this noob.
Kind of hard to say, depends on your talents and needs. Here is a great website link to get started though:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crminthefield/archive/2015/01/12/build-your-own-crm-mobile-app-s.aspx
Just a note on the Rest calls, you can only perform CRUD operations by default, and will need to jump through some hoops to perform the other calls.
Good morning,
I am going to write a web service and I am not sure which framework would suit the situation best. I understand what Node and .Net are good at.
The client will call the services at the following stages:
App loads up - user logins in via Facebook API.
User can create an "entity". This entity will be stored in a database (SQL for .Net/ Azure table for Node) and also posted to a Facebook application (timeline stuff). User can make changes to this at any time.
User can browse Facebook Friends (Facebook API again).
Changes to the entity will be pushed to all users who have "joined" the same entity (SignalR .net/Socket.io Node).
That is the skeleton of the web services, there may be more Facebook calls or CRUD operations. Which Framework will handle this best?
Many thanks.
Aside from the mentioned WebAPI, also consider the excellent ServiceStack for building a webservice.
Any well-written code regardless of the framework will be able to handle it.
If you are a .NET developer I personally think type safety of C# is important so I would not go down the Azure node.js way since it will also force me to use Azure.
I would personally use ASP.NET Web API.
As long as you build your application on a solid framework, you'll be on the bright side (assuming you know how to set-up such an application in a secure and proper manner). For .NET i'd use the Web API and for node.js i'd stick with something like express/connect.
Just keep in mind that node.js and the frameworks based on it are still subject to heavy changes, whereas ASP.NET is production-safe since years.
As a bottom line, i don't think you're able to say "X is better than Y because of Z" in this scenario. It's a matter of personal preferences, infrastructure and your technical skills.
Describing this in detail is going to be tough but here goes:
Configuration
ASP.NET MVC 3.0 Website Project
Visual Studio 2010 SP1
Windows Azure Deployment including, Compute, Storage and SQL
SQL Azure has two sets of DB's; Development & Production
Problem
Using the ASP.NET Universal Providers I've setup a Development_ApplicationServices DB in my SQL Azure account. I've then gone in to the ASP.NET Configuration Website and created users for Development and assigned them to roles. As there are multiple developers working on this project this works well so we consistently have the same default accounts available to test role related use cases. Development has been running smoothly without any issues with the Providers.
I posted the Application to an Azure Compute Instance today for the 1st time and tried to login. Suddenly, the accounts we've been using, despite pointing at the same database are not working. If I register a new account it works fine while I'm in the Azure environment however, if I run in the development environment and then the account I created on the Azure instance using the default Register function of MVC in the Account Controller isn't accessible though I can see it in the DB if I query directly.
Question
Does the Universal Provider embed something about the Site Context (for lack of a better term) into the hash for UserID or Password?
Is there a best practice for the way I've configured by Dev/Prod environment, as it relates to SQL Azure and Membership Services, that I can use as reference?
Happy to answer questions to make this more clear but I'm pretty stumped at this point and don't know what would be relevant to include since this seems odd, to me at least.
Thanks in advance,
K
I was also getting this exact same behavior. I posted a question on the official Azure forums ( http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazuredevelopment/thread/e8944c4d-5e22-4844-82fc-2e6863f0901a ) and was directed to the answer in another post here on stackoverflow I didn't find during my initial searching.
You'll find the answer here:
ASP.NET Membership - login works locally, fails on Azure
To summarize, the hashing type used on Azure is different from that which is now the default for .NET 4.0. You have to explicitely override the default machineKey element and the hashAlgorithmType attribute of the membership element in the Web.config to specify the hashing method to use.
It worked for me!
I heard that apps don’t port directly and they have to be specifically written to work with Azure. I’m new to Azure and did some reading but I don’t see anything from their site or documentation that suggests that you must specifically code for Azure, so is it true?
If this question is better suited for another StackExchange site please let me know.
You should take a look at the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit to see some introductory project labs.
While you theoretically can just "drop in" some apps into a Windows Azure VM, it hardly makes sense to do so. Some apps can be migrated with only minor changes, such as an asp.net website - session state is easily handled by AppFabric Cache, and the Web Role VM is Windows Server 2008 with Full IIS. However, you'd still need to integrate with Windows Azure Diagnostics, to be able to have external visibility to the health of your app.
Further, with the example above, there are more optimal things you can do, such as moving static content to blob storage, and taking load off your VMs. This requires you to upload this content, and then change your IMG and other tag URLs to point to a slightly-different URL.
Just remember that you're moving to Windows Azure to take advantage of its platform and related services, not just to be a rack to host a server. To take advantages of these services, you're going to have to target them specifically, such as:
Access control services
Caching
Connectivity (vpn, service bus)
Diagnostics
Database (SQL Azure)
Synchronization services
Traffic management across data centers
This is somewhat true. Your apps will typically run as-is. You just need to add an azure project to the solution, and add your MVC apps as roles to the Azure Project.
I found O'Reilly's "Programming Windows Azure" to be a good conceptual introduction to Azure.
I have a WPF application that uses LINQ-to-SQL on a local .MDF file. This solution is simple, easy, and effective, i.e. I set up my model once, then read/write data anywhere via LINQ:
using (var db = Datasource.GetContext())
{
oldItem = (from i in db.Infos
where i.Id == TheId
select i).SingleOrDefault();
CreateForm(db, FormBase, oldItem, Button_Save);
}
What is the dead-simple equivalent of this for Silverlight apps?
Searching I find an explosion of terms:
WCF RIA Services, WCF Data Services (ADO.NET Data Services, Astoria), Data Services Toolkit
.NET RIA Services
OData(Dallas)
GData
REST, REST-based, REST-like, REST-inspired
XML, JSON, RDF+XML
web services, SOA
cloud-based services, Azure, SQL Azure, Azure Services Platform
All I want to do is this:
create an .mdf file
use some LINQ-to-SQL-like tool to generate a web-enabled (REST?) data layer etc.
ftp the .mdf file and classes up to my ASP.NET web hosting service
write silverlight clients that read and write to this data source with LINQ
Concentrate on learning RIA Data Services, or WCF Data Services. It converts your LINQ queries inside Silverlight to REST requests, and saves you from writing some of the infrastructure code. The whole idea is that your SL app communicates only to web services, you don't have access to physical DB, like when you're using some ORM (L2S). In SL, your are inside browser's sandbox, which prevents you from accessing file system, including db files.
Other approach is to write web service and expose data through it (GetArticleByID), and then you consume that services from Silverlight. Then you use LINQ to iterate on fetched, loaded data.
Here's what to do -
Create a Silverlight app using Visual Studio. You will get two projects, one with the Silverlight XAML, and the other a web application to host it.
In the web application, add your DBML (Linq-2-SQL) file. Configure as normal
In the web application, add a Silverlight enabled WCF service
In the WCF service, define some methods that access the L2S data context
In the Silverlight project, go to add Service Reference, hit "discover" and add the WCF service in
Instantiate the service, and access your methods
Sounds a little complex, but pretty straight forward in practice.
Not possible. Silverlight cannot access databases directly. Some sort of web service layer is required in between. I think WCF and RIA Services are the most widely used.
I would strongly recommend that you clear an hour in your schedule and just watch this video:-
net-ria-services-intro
In fact clear 2 hours and work along side the video building your own copy of the app being built.
If you want to develop a regular LOB (Line Of Business) Application, then you should follow the approach using a web service interface to your database. The RIA services or WCF data service is the current RAD (Rapid Application Development) technology by Microsoft to make this task easier.
If you're talking about a special scenario you need: Silverlight 4 when running out of browser can talk to COM servers on windows now. Talking to databases is described in this vast blog post: Cutting Edge Silverlight 4 Com Features.
If you're looking for a way to manipulate database-like files, you may take a look at the csharp-sqlite project. I think it compiles for Silverlight without much ado (quick and dirty proof of concept here: Proof of Concept csharp-sqlite in Silverlight). With it you could create and manipulate a database file in the user's isolated file storage in a regular Silverlight application and then upload it to wherever you desire.