Rion Williams - Rion.IO (Page 3)

My Developer Resolutions for 2017

It's a new year, and with that comes new opportunities for growth, change, and all the other type of things that you read on motivational posters. In the past, I've been pretty good about keeping resolutions, so I thought I would jot down a few and

asp.net entity-framework offset

Page the Doctor! When Entity Framework Paging Goes Rogue!

Over the past few months, Entity Framework has decided to seemingly go renegade and ruin my days, especially with clients that have been running older versions of SQL Server (pre-2012). Without even touching Entity Framework, things just blow up. Paging the doctor! These scenarios generally all begin around the same

asp.net asp.net core javascript

Using ASP.NET Core Javascript Services to Play Nice with Client-side Frameworks

Developing a web application today is probably one of the best times to ever do so, at least, if you can figure out how to get your environment set up. Frameworks like Angular, Aurelia, React, and countless others are incredible tools, but there's a learning curve to make

tools electron desktop

Bringing Your Web Application to Desktop Life with Electron

Sick of dealing with browser quirks? Or maybe one of your users just LOVES some old crappy version of Internet Explorer? Or do you have users that simply cannot avoid the temptation of an address bar that can take them on a journey to social media land? This short post

community coding blocks merge conflict

Great Developer Podcasts For Your Commute

I'm fortunate enough to live in a relatively small city and have a commute that generally never takes longer than 15-20m. Nevertheless, a few years ago I began listening to podcasts to more actively fill in the noise gap while sitting in traffic. I've found they

community

Reflection on the Microsoft MVP Summit 2016

Now that I have had the chance to spend a bit of time with my loved ones after the mentally and physically exhausting experience that is the Microsoft MVP Summit, I can share a few of my thoughts on this year's event. Less Code, More Connection. With Microsoft&

tools

Hello World: Learning Resources for New and Potential Developers

I spend quite a bit of time talking and exchanging e-mails with new or prospective developers and Computer Science students. One of the most common things that I get asked in these conversations is about resources, supplementary materials (for those occasional not-so-great professors), and any tips that might not be

c#

C# 7.0 : Tuples to the Extreme!

Tuples are something that many developers may not frequently work with on a day-to-day basis, but they have a few different uses. With the latest upcoming release of C#, however this may change as tuples are getting a major power-up and will likely see quite a bit more "play&

asp.net core asp.net entity-framework

Accessing SQL from Entity Framework Core Queries in ASP.NET Core

ORMs like Entity Framework have always been shrouded in a bit of controversy from SQL purists who aren't in control of the types of queries that these tools are building behind the scenes. While this is a perfectly valid stance to take, these same tools can often assist

glyphfriend visual-studio tools

Glyphfriend 1.5.2 Released!

It's been around three months since the last major release for Glyphfriend [http://rion.io/2016/07/01/new-and-improved-glyphfriend-1-5-released/], which consisted of quite a few new additions and a few minor housekeeping issues. This latest release focused quite a bit on a different animal entirely: performance. What'

visual-studio

Common Visual Studio Extension Woes

As a developer of a rather popular Visual Studio extension, I have often had my fair share of issues when dealing with some of the quirks involved when building an extension. 90% of the time, these issues generally center on the debugging process. This post focuses on a few of

asp.net asp.net core tools

Bundling and Minifying in ASP.NET Core Applications

No one likes an application or site that loads slowly. Thankfully, as developers, there are things that we can do to help mitigate load times and often turn seconds into milliseconds. Web performance is such a large subject, but this post is going to focus on bundling and minifying resources,

glyphfriend visual-studio tools

New and Improved Glyphfriend 1.5 Released!

Glyphfriend continues to exceed my expectations for my first open-source project so I thought I would write a short post on some of the recent additions to the extension for its 1.5 release. What's New In 1.5? Since the last post on 1.3 [http://rion.

asp.net asp.net mvc

Extending MVC Controllers from External Assemblies and Projects

Recently, a question was asked on Stack Overflow regarding how to go about extending an existing ASP.NET MVC Controller that was present within another assembly or project (i.e. external to the "main" MVC application), so I thought I would take a bit of time to cover

asp.net asp.net core

RC2 Package Restoration Woes

Working with pre-release tools is always an adventure, and I'm sure that anyone that has followed ASP.NET Core (or any of its other names) can attest to that. With a few different applications in some form of production, I've been extremely happy with the changes

azure

I Ain't Afraid of Upgrading Ghost (on Azure)

This post highlights my journey of upgrading Ghost on Azure and focuses on how I got my password back, upgraded Ghost (and Node) on Azure, and some of the things I learned along the way. How this all began. Like most developers, I have roughly a million passwords that I

community

It's been quiet. Too quiet.

What's been up? You may have noticed that this blog has been rather quiet recently. Don't worry, I've noticed too. This has primarily been due a perfect storm of events, which I'll skim over throughout this post. 1. My one-year old learning

asp.net web-api tools

The Postman Always Tests Your Web APIs, Twice.

If you are a developer that spends quite a bit of time writing RESTful, OData or any other type of Web API, then you probably also finding yourself doing a reasonable amount of time testing these as well. If that is the case, then this post might be something worth

glyphfriend visual-studio tools

Glyphfriend Updated to 1.3 then 1.4; 70k+ Downloads Reached

The thought of creating a Visual Studio extension really had never crossed my mind until attending the annual Microsoft MVP Summit in 2014 and listening to Mads Kristensen [https://github.com/madskristensen] give a talk on developing them, which was just the amount of inspiration that I needed at the

sql-server

Clearing Down a Database Full of Constraints in SQL Server

If you have ever been in a scenario where you have to clear down some data within a database that is chock full of constraints but don't want to wipe out your precious relationships, indices and all that other jazz? I found myself in a similar situation earlier

asp.net asp.net core

Accessing Identity and HttpContext Info using Dependency Injection in .NET 5

If you have been using .NET 5 (or by its more recent moniker of .NET Core), then you know that Dependency Injection is rather important in this new ecosystem. Thankfully, the development team made it incredibly easy to use. One common scenario that I have seen arise since its release

glyphfriend visual-studio tools

Glyphfriend v1.2: Now with Markdown Emoji Support

One of the most exciting things about working on an open-source project has always been the community involvement. This interaction allows for anyone to make feature requests, report issues or even fork the project and make it their own. Glyphfriend has seen a huge spike in downloads since the release

asp.net asp.net mvc asp.net web-api

Understanding Routing Precedence in ASP.NET MVC and Web API

Routing can be a very tricky issue within ASP.NET MVC and Web API applications. This can be especially true if you have a variety of different routes with varying parameters defined in such a way that a single request could satisfy multiple routes. This blog post will cover some

asp.net asp.net core

Cache Rules Everything Around Me : Using ASP.NET MVC6 TagHelpers to Bust Cache

I cannot count how many times in my life as a developer that I have been contacted after a deployment by a client that is unable to see any of the changes that were deployed (or something isn't working). There are a variety of ways to respond to

glyphfriend visual-studio tools

Glyphfriend Updated to v1.1

Apparently when you build a Visual Studio extension that is based on third-party libraries, it's quite important to remember that things like these change a lot. So I took an hour or so this week and decided to bring Glyphfriend up to speed. What is Glyphfriend (again)? Glyphfriend