Archives
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Technology Predictions for 2013
The year 2012 was the year of hypes and we had lot of discussions about Cloud, Big Data and Enterprise Mobility. The year 2013 will be the year, where we can see lot of hypes will become realities. Just going behind the hypes will not help you, but a pragmatic approach to new technologies will give you lot of business values and operational agility. In 2013, Mobile apps will continue the momentum and Cloud adoption will be widely improved on 2013. Organizations, especially larger organizations will invest huge amount for enabling the enterprise mobility in the year 2013, and they will try to expose REST/Hypermedia APIs over the organizational data, for providing a better mobility across the enterprise and public world.
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Writing Unit Tests for an ASP.NET MVC Action Method that handles Ajax Request and Normal Request
In this blog post, I will demonstrate how to write unit tests for an ASP.NET MVC action method, which handles both Ajax request and normal HTTP Request. I will write a unit test for specifying the behavior of an Ajax request and will write another unit test for specifying the behavior of a normal HTTP request. Both Ajax request and normal request will be handled by a single action method. So the ASP.NET MVC action method will be execute HTTP Request object’s IsAjaxRequest method for identifying whether it is an Ajax request or not. So we have to create mock object for Request object and also have to make as a Ajax request from the unit test for verifying the behavior of an Ajax request. I have used NUnit and Moq for writing unit tests.
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EFMVC Migrated to .NET 4.5, Visual Studio 2012, ASP.NET MVC 4 and EF 5 Code First
I have just migrated my EFMVC app from .NET 4.0 and ASP.NET MVC 4 RC to .NET 4.5, ASP.NET MVC 4 RTM and Entity Framework 5 Code First. In this release, the EFMVC solution is built with Visual Studio 2012 RTM. The migration process was very smooth and did not made any major changes other than adding simple unit tests with NUnit and Moq. I will add more unit tests on later and will also modify the existing solution.
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Slides and Code for my Node.js Talk in FOSS.IN
I did a presentation on Node.js at FOSS.IN 2012, in Bangalore, India. The title of the talk was “Building Web Apps with Node.js”. The slides used for the talk can download from here and the source code can download from Github at https://github.com/shijuvar/NodeExpressMongo. The demo app is a simple CRUD application built with Express.js, Jade, Mongoose and MongoDB. Please note that I would continuously update the source code at Github.
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Using TypeScript in ASP.NET MVC Projects
In the previous blog post Microsoft TypeScript : A Typed Superset of JavaScript, I have given a brief introduction on TypeScript. In this post, I will demonstrate how to use TypeScript with ASP.NET MVC projects and how we can compile TypeScript within the ASP.NET MVC projects.
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Microsoft TypeScript : A Typed Superset of JavaScript
JavaScript is becoming a ubiquitous programming language for the web, and the popularity of JavaScript is increasing day by day. Earlier, JavaScript was just a language for the browser. But now, we can write JavaScript apps for browser, server and mobile. With the advent of Node.js, you can build scalable, high performance apps on the server with JavaScript. But many developers, especially developers who are working with static type languages, are hating the JavaScript language due to the lack of structuring and the maintainability problems of JavaScript. Microsoft TypeScript is trying to solve some problems of JavaScript when we are building scalable JavaScript apps.
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CRUD demo in Node.js with Windows Azure SQL Database
Microsoft has recently announced the preview release of Microsoft Driver for Node.JS for SQL Server which allows the Node.js developers to connect Microsoft SQL Server database and Windows Azure SQL database. This is a great addition to the tool set for Node.js developers. NoSQL databases are widely using with Node.js for building high performance apps. However, in many situations we might be required a relational database where we can use Microsoft Driver for Node.JS for SQL Server, to working with Microsoft SQL Server database and Windows Azure SQL database. I have a created CRUD demo in Node.js with Express framework which can be available on Github at https://github.com/shijuvar/NodeOnAzure/tree/master/SqlNode . The demo app is built with Node.js, Express.js, Jade View Engine and the node-sqlserver module.
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EFMVC App Migrated to Visual Studio 2012 RC and ASP.NET MVC 4 RC
I have just migrated my EFMVC app from ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta to ASP.NET MVC 4 RC. In this release, the EFMVC solution is built with Visual Studio 2012. The migration process was very smooth and did not made any major changes other than adding AutoMapper for mapping between View Model objects and Domain Model objects.
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Building Apps with Napa Office 365 Development Tools
In this blog post, I will demonstrate how to install Napa Office 365 Development Tools onto your Office 365 developer site and how to building apps for SharePoint and Office by using the Napa developer tools. Microsoft has recently introduced "Napa" which is the new Office 365 development tools that lets the developers to build apps for Office and SharePoint within a browser without the help of Visual Studio. Napa” is a web based free app for SharePoint so that you don't need to install anything on your machine to working with "Napa" Office 365 Development Tools. “Napa” is an excellent way to start building apps for the new Cloud App Model.
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Microsoft MVP for the Third Time
I just received an email from Microsoft which stating that I have been awarded as Microsoft MVP again for 2012!! Now I became a Microsoft MVP for the third time in a row.
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Building and Deploying Windows Azure Web Sites using Git and GitHub for Windows
Microsoft Windows Azure team has released a new version of Windows Azure which is providing many excellent features. The new Windows Azure provides Web Sites which allows you to deploy up to 10 web sites for free in a multitenant shared environment and you can easily upgrade this web site to a private, dedicated virtual server when the traffic is grows. The Meet Windows Azure Fact Sheet provides the following information about a Windows Azure Web Site:
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Social meet up on Twitter for MEET Windows Azure on June the 7th
Get ready to MEET Windows Azure live on June the 7th. The Microsoft Windows Azure team is conducting an online event “Meet Windows Azure” on June 7th 2012 starting at 1 PM PDT. The event will be presented by Scott Guthrie. If you want to watch event live, you can register here: http://register.meetwindowsazure.com/.
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Developing and Deploying Node.js Express Web App on Windows Azure
In my last post Beginner’s Guide to Node.js on Windows Azure, I have introduced Node.js and Windows Azure Tools for Node.js. In this post, I will demonstrate how to develop and deploy a Node.js web app using Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js. In this demo web app, I will be using Node module Express as the web app framework and Jade as the view engine for the HTML view templates. We are using Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js for developing and deploying the app on Windows Azure. If you want to deploy Node.js apps on Windows Azure using Cloud9 IDE, check out my blog post from here.
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Beginner’s Guide to Node.js on Windows Azure
In this post, I will provide an introduction to Node.js and Windows Azure tools for Node.js and will also provide few resources to start and develop Node.js apps on Windows Azure.
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Building a Simple HTTP API using Node.js with MongoDB and Mongoose
In this post, I will demonstrate how to build a simple HTTP API using Node.js with NoSQL database MongoDB. This demo app will be using MongoDB object modeling tool Mongoose to connecting with MongoDB from the Node app. This demo app is a very basic level JSON based HTTP API which is not following any better practices and mainly created this sample demo for demonstrating Node.js and MongoDB using with Mongoose Node package.
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Windows Azure SDK for Node.js 0.5.4 Released
The Microsoft Windows Azure team has released the Windows Azure SDK for Node.js 0.5.4 which will be using the Node.js 0.6.17 and iisnode 0.1.19. The Node.js 0.6.17 contains a security fix against the HTTP Server Security Vulnerability detected by recently. It would be recommended to upgrade to the new version of Azure SDK for Node.js if you have already deployed any Node.js app to Windows Azure which will provide better security. The iisnode 0.1.19 provides iisnode.yml file instead of XML based configurations which can be use for setting up all iisnode settings. You can download the Windows Azure SDK for Node.js 0.5.4 from here.
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Windows Azure Supports Voice and SMS Capabilities
Windows Azure is now supports Telephony and SMS capabilities to the apps hosted in Windows Azure by using the Twilio API. Twilio is a third-party service that provides a cloud-based telephony service which allows to add scalable, reliable voice and text messaging capabilities into you apps. Using Twilio's native libraries for Java, PHP and .NET, developers can build telephony enabled web apps hosted on Windows Azure in which we can make and receive phone calls and SMS messages from phones and web apps. Twillio is providing 1,000 free text messages or 1,000 voice minutes for Windows Azure developers and you can get the free offerings for Windows Azure from here .
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Dependency Injection in ASP.NET Web API using Autofac
In this post, I will demonstrate how to use Dependency Injection in ASP.NET Web API using Autofac in an ASP.NET MVC 4 app. The new ASP.NET Web API is a great framework for building HTTP services. The Autofac IoC container provides the better integration with ASP.NET Web API for applying dependency injection. The NuGet package Autofac.WebApi provides the Dependency Injection support for ASP.NET Web API services.
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Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js
The Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js is a command-line tool that allows the Node developers to build and deploy Node.js apps in Windows Azure using Windows PowerShell cmdlets. Using Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js, you can develop, test, deploy and manage Node based hosted service in Windows Azure.
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Using Node Package Manager in Cloud9 IDE
NPM - Package Manager for Node.js
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Building and Deploying Node.js Apps to Windows Azure using Cloud9 IDE
In this post, I will demonstrate how to building Node.js apps using Cloud9 IDE ad deploying Node.js apps to Windows Azure from the Cloud9 IDE. Cloud9 IDE is a cross-platform, browser-based development environment for JavaScript and Node.js apps which is integrates with GitHub and BitBucket repository services. Cloud9 IDE is the most popular developer tool among the Node developers. Since Cloud9 IDE is working and running on the browser, developers can work from any OS platform. Using with Cloud IDE, you can build and deploy Node.js apps to Windows Azure. The Cloud9 IDE can access from http://c9.io/. Cloud9 IDE provides a free subscription as well as a paid subscription with more features.
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EFMVC App Migrated to ASP.NET MVC 4
I have upgraded my EFMVC app from ASP.NET MVC 3 to ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta. EFMVC is a demo web app initially built for demonstrating ASP.NET MVC and EF Code First. Now I am planning to add more features onto EFMVC and want to add cloud specific features with Windows Azure. You can expect more implementations in future releases.
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ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta Released
Microsoft has announced the availability of ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta. You can get the all details on ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta at http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc4. The greatest new feature of ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta is the addition of ASP.NET Web API which lets the developers to build REST based services which can be easily consume from variety of clients including browsers and mobile devices. These HTTP services are ideal for clients which are building by using Ajax and following a highly responsive UI.
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Microsoft Reduces Prices on SQL Azure Cloud Storage
Microsoft has reduced the price of SQL Azure storage which will greatly attract customers to migrating their apps to Windows Azure. The newly announced price of SQL Azure decreases 48 percentages to 75 percentages of cost from the previous cost.
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Tips and Important Steps for Migrating Apps to Windows Azure
The following are the few important steps and tips for migrating ASP.NET apps to Windows Azure.