Matt Gerega

Tag: .Net

  • Not everything you read on the internet is true….

    I spend a lot of time searching the web for tutorials, walkthroughs, and examples. So much so, in fact, that “Google Search” could be listed as a top skill on my resume. With that in mind, though, it’s important to remember that not everything you read on the Internet is true, and to take care in how you approach things.

    A simple plan

    I was trying to create a new ASP.NET / .Net 6 application that I could use to test connectivity to various resources in some newly configured Kubernetes clusters. When I used the Visual Studio 2022 templates, I noticed that the new “minimal” styling was used in the template. This is my first opportunity to try the new minimal styling, so I looked to the web for help. I came across this tutorial on Medium.com.

    I followed the tutorial and, on my local machine, it worked like a charm. So I built a quick container image and started deploying into my Kubernetes cluster.

    Trouble brewing

    When I deployed into my cluster, I kept receiving errors about SQL connection errors. Specifically, that the server was not found. I added some logging, and the connection string seemed correct, but nothing was working.

    I thought it might be a DNS error within the cluster, so I spent at least 2 hours trying to determine if there was a DNS issues in my cluster. I even tried another cluster to see if it had to do with our custom subnet settings in the original cluster.

    After a while, I figured out the problem, and was about ready to quit my job. The article has a step to override the OnConfiguring method in the DbContext, like this:

    protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
        {
            var configuration = new ConfigurationBuilder()
                .SetBasePath(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory())
                .AddJsonFile("appsettings.json")
                .Build();

            var connectionString = configuration.GetConnectionString("AppDb");
            optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer(connectionString);
        }

    I took this as necessary and put it in there. But what I glossed over was that this will run every time migrations happen. And the configuration is ONLY pulling from appsettings.json, not from environment variables or any other configuration sources.

    That “Oh……” moment

    At that point I realized that I had been troubleshooting the fact that this particular function was ignoring the connection string I was passing in using environment variables. To make matters worse, the logging I added that printed the connection string was using the full configuration (with environment variables), so it looked like the value was changing. In reality, it was the value from appSettings.json the whole time.

    The worst part: that override is completely unnecessary. I removed the entire function, and my code operates as normal.

    No Hard Feelings

    Let me be clear, though: as written, the article does a fine job of walking you through the process of setting up an ASP.NET / .Net 6 application in the minimal API styling. My issue was not recognizing how that OnConfiguring override would act in the container, and then bouncing around everywhere to figure it out.

    I will certainly be more careful about examining the tutorial code before traipsing around in Kubernetes command lines and DNS tools.

  • React in a weekend…

    Last week was a bit of a ride. My wife was thrust into her real estate career by a somewhat abrupt (but not totally unexpected) reduction in force at her company. We spent the middle of the week shopping to replace her company vehicle, which I do not recommend in the current market. I also offered to spend some time on standing up a small lead generation site for her so that she can establish a presence on the web for her real estate business.

    I spent maybe 10-12 hours getting something running. Could it have been done more quickly? Sure. But I am never one to resist the chance to setup deployment pipelines and API specifications. I figured the project would run longer than 5 days.

    Why only 5 days? Well, Coldwell Banker (her real estate broker) provides a LOT of tools for her, including a branded website with tie in’s to the MLS system. So I forwarded www.agentandalyn.com to her website and my site will be digitally trashed.

    Frameworks

    For familiarity, I chose the .Net 5 ASP.NET / React template as a starter. I have a number of API projects running so I was able to utilize some boilerplate code from those projects to configure Serilog to my internal ELK stack and basic authentication to my Identity Server. The above tutorial is a good start to getting things moving forward with the site.

    On the React app site, I immediately updated all the components to their latest versions. This included moving Bootstrap to version 5. Reactstrap is installed by default, but does not have support for Bootstrap 5. I could have dropped Reactstrap in favor of the RC version of React-Bootstrap, but I’m comfortable enough in my HTML styling, so I just used the base DOM elements and styled them with the Bootstrap styles.

    It probably took me an hour or so to take the template code and turn it into the base for the home page. And then I built a deployment pipeline…

    A Pipeline, you say..

    Yes. For what amounts to a small personal project, I built an Azure DevOps pipeline that builds the project and its associated Helm chart, publishes the resulting docker image and Helm chart to feeds in Proget, and initiates a release in Octopus Deploy.

    While this may seem like overkill, I actually have most of this down to a pretty simple process using some standard tools and templates.

    Helm Charts made easy

    For the Helm charts, I utilizes the common chart from k8s-at-home’s library-charts repository. This limits my Helm chart to some custom values in values.yaml file to define my image, services, ingress, and any other customizations I may want.

    I typically use a custom liveness and readiness probe that lets me hit a custom health endpoint served up using ASP.NET Core’s Custom Health Checks. This allows me some control to add more than just a ping check for the service.

    Azure DevOps Pipelines

    As mentioned in more than one previous post, I am thoroughly impressed with Azure DevOps Build Pipelines thus far. One of the nicer features is the ability to save common steps/jobs/stages to a separate repository, and then re-use those build templates in other pipelines.

    Using my own templates, I was able to construct a build pipeline that compiles, creates and publishes a docker image, creates and publishes a Helm chart, and creates and deploys an Octopus Release in a 110 line YAML file.

    Octopus Project / Release Pipeline

    I have been experimenting with different ways to deploy and manage deployments to Kubernetes. While not the fanciest, Octopus Deploy does the job. I am able to execute a single step to deploy the Helm chart to the cluster, and can override various values with Octopus variables, meaning I can use the same process to deploy to test, stage, and production.

    Wasted effort?

    So I spent a few days standing up a website that I am in the middle of deleting. Was it worth it? Actually, yes. I learned more about my processes and potential ways to make them more efficient. It also spiked my interest in putting some UIs on top of some of my API wrappers.