VisugXL - Running Azure on your laptop using Azure Arc

Last weekend I gave a presentation at VisugXL about Azure Arc. I’ll write a few follow-up posts explaining the steps I took to get it all up and running(and where I got into trouble).

If you can’t wait until then, here is already the presentation:

.NET 6–Breaking changes

Although Microsoft takes a lot of effort to maximize backwards compatibility, migrating to .NET 6 can result in breaking changes that might affect you.

So before you start to upgrade have a look at the list of breaking changes maintained here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/compatibility/6.0

ASP.NET Core - Build a query string

What is wrong with the following code?

Nothing you would say? What if I passed ‘Bert & Ernie’ as the searchterm parameter?

The problem is that I’m using string interpolation to build up the query. This could be OK if you have full control on the passed parameters but in this case it is input coming from a user. The example above would lead to an incorrect query string.

Writing the correct logic to handle ampersands, question marks and so on would be a challenge. Luckily ASP.NET Core offers a QueryHelpers clas with an AddQueryString function:

public static string AddQueryString(string uri, string name, string value);

public static string AddQueryString(string uri, IDictionary<string, string> queryString);

Let’s update our code example to use this:

That's better!

Azure DevOps Pipelines–A local file header is corrupt

A colleague contacted me with the following question; he tried to run a specific Azure Pipelines build but before even one build task could be executed, the build failed.

I asked him to send me the logs and he shared the following screenshot:

As you can see the build fails in the ‘Job initialization’ phase while downloading a specifc task ‘VersionAssemblies’.

The strange this was than when I searched for this build task I couldn’t find it between the list of installed extensions on the Azure DevOps server.

I took a look at the Azure DevOps marketplace and even there this specific build task was non-existent. Strange!

At least this explained the error message I got, as the build pipeline probably couldn’t find the task either.

In the end I fixed it by introducing an alternative build task that achieved the same goal(updating the AssemblyInfo with a build number).

Azure DevOps–SonarQube error

As part of our build pipelines, we run a code analysis through SonarQube. After moving SonarQube to a different server, our Azure DevOps pipelines started to fail.

When I opened the build logs, I noticed the following error message:

ERROR: JAVA_HOME exists but does not point to a valid Java home folder. No “bin\java.exe” file can be found there.

I logged in on our SonarQube server and checked the value of the JAVA_HOME environment variable:

JAVA_HOME = c:\program files\Zulu\zulu-11\bin\

Based on the error message above, it seems that the SonarScanner expects that we don’t include the ‘bin’ folder. So I updated the environment variable to:

JAVA_HOME = c:\program files\Zulu\zulu-11

After rescheduling the build, the SonarQube analysis task completed succesfully.

GraphQL Crash Course

If you want to get started with GraphQL, you can have a look at the following video:

Remark: This is part of a bigger course that is available on Udemy.

GraphQL–Strawberry Shake GraphQL client

Until recently I always used the GraphQL.Client as the GraphQL client of my choice. This client is straightforward and easy-to-use.

For a new project I decided to give Strawberry Shake a try. Strawberry Shake was created by Chilicream, the creators of the HotChocolate GraphQL backend for .NET.

Strawberry Shake is using a different approach as the GraphQL.Client as it heavily relies on code generation and looks similar to the Apollo GraphQL client from a design point of view.

I mostly followed the “Get started” documentation to get the Strawberry Shake client up and running, but I didn’t get everything up and running immediatelly so I’ll add some extra detail on the points where I got into trouble.

Add the CLI tools

• We start by adding the Strawberry Shake CLI tools
• Open the folder that contains the project where you want to add the Strawberry Shake GraphQL client.
• Now wee need to first create a dotnet tool-manifest.

dotnet new tool-manifest

Getting ready...

The template "Dotnet local tool manifest file" was created successfully.

• After doing that we can install the Strawberry Shake tools locally.

dotnet tool install StrawberryShake.Tools –local

You can invoke the tool from this directory using the following commands: 'dotnet tool run dotnet-graphql' or 'dotnet dotnet-graphql'.

Tool 'strawberryshake.tools' (version '12.0.1') was successfully installed. Entry is added to the manifest file C:\projects\graphqlclientexample\.config\dotnet-tools.json.

Add the NuGet packages

• Now we need to add some NuGet packages:

dotnet add package StrawberryShake.Transport.Http

dotnet add package StrawberryShake.CodeGeneration.CSharp.Analyzers

dotnet add package Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection

dotnet add package Microsoft.Extensions.Http

Add the GraphQL client

• Next step is to add a client using the following command  dotnet graphql init {{ServerUrl}} -n {{ClientName}}.

dotnet graphql init https://example.graphql.be/graphql/ -n ExampleClient

Download schema started.

Download schema completed in 399 ms

Client configuration started.

Client configuration completed in 137 ms

•  A .graphqlrc.json is generated together with a schema.graphql file and a schema.extensions.graphql file:

Add a GraphQL query

• At this moment no code is generated yet. Therefore we have to write our first graphql query.
• Create a new .graphql file and write the query you want to execute

• The next step mentioned in the documentation is that you only need to compile your code to let the code generation do its work. But nothing happened when I tried to do that.
• I discovered that I had to take one extra step. I needed to set the build action for the graphql file to GraphQL compiler:

• Now when I build my code a Generated folder appears containing an ExampleClient. StrawberryShake.cs file.

• Register the generated client in your Startup.cs file:

Use the generated query

• To use the query I first need to inject the generated client:

• Then I can invoke the query in a type safe manner: