Globally available values in Blazor Server (and changing them during runtime) - blazor-server-side

In Blazor server the "appsettings.json" file is great for storing globally accessible variables. But what if these need changing during runtime? For example, lets say we have a stored value for "IsMaintenanceMode".
Given that;
"IsMaintenanceMode" may need to be set to "True" during runtime (to then direct users to a maintenance page)
If we were using a middleware to check this value for True (i.e. redirect the user to maintenance page) - then we would not want to look this variable up each time - eg from a database - on every request.
Traditionally this might have been accomplished using Application variables but I'm just not sure of the best approach with Blazor.
So my question is - what's the best way of storing this value in a way that can be "cached" for ease of lookup, but also easily changed during runtime?
Thanks for any advice.

StateServer.cs
public class StateServer {
public bool IsMaintenanceMode {get; set;}
}
Add it in Startup.cs
public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
services.AddSingleton<StateServer >();
}
Component.razor // Can be layout, main page, etc.
#inject StateServer _stateServer
#if (_stateServer.IsMaintenanceMode){
<Warning />
}
else {
<Body />
}
#code {
}
Or, you can check the value in one of the page lifecyle events, and navigate to whatever page you like.

Related

Using global variable in ASP.NET Core controller

The question is simple but I don't know how use it.
For example there is a controller
public class MainController : Controller
{
private int a;
public IActionResult Index(bool set = true)
{
if (set) a = 10;
return View(a)
}
}
If I get in Index page at first time, I set a = 10. And I get in Index page again (for example refresh Index page or paging in Index page, i.e. move in same page) Actually, I get in Index page with url : ~Index?set=False after first access.
Then the a has 0 (default for int variable). I did not know the Controller page (Controller class) is always initialized when I gen in it even when I move to same page.
So, I want to use variable like global variable not using session.
Is there any way?
It sounds like you wish to persist a variable between requests.
Per user
If you wish to store a variable that persists but is only visible to the current user, use session state:
public int? A
{
get
{
return HttpContext.Current.Session["A"] as int?;
}
set
{
HttpContext.Current.Session["A"] = value;
}
}
Note that we are using int? instead of int in order to handle the case where the session variable has not yet been set. If you prefer to default to 0, you can simply use the coalesce operator, ??.
Truly global
If you wish to persist a variable in a manner where there is only one copy for all users, you can store it in a static variable or in an application state variable.
So either
static volatile public int a;
Or
public int? A
{
get
{
return HttpContext.Current.Application["A"] as int?;
}
set
{
HttpContext.Current.Application["A"] = value;
}
}
Obviously variables that are shared between users can change at any time (due to activity in other threads), so you should be careful about how you handle them. For variables that are int-sized or smaller, the processor will perform atomic reads and writes, but for variables larger than an int you may need to use Interlocked or lock to control access.
You do not need to worry about thread synchronization for session variables; the framework handles it for you.
Note: The above is just an example to help you find the right API. It does not necessarily demonstrate the best pattern-- accessing HttpContext via the static method Current is considered bad form, as it makes it impossible to mock the context. Please see this article for ways to expose it to your code via DI.

Asp.net Boilerplate - Implement setting manager with database

I've been building an asp.net core website, using the asp.net boilerplate template. As of now, I've been storing all of the settings in the appsettings.json file. As the application gets bigger, I'm thinking I should start storing some settings via ABP's SettingProvider and ISettingStore.
My question is, does anyone have, or know of, a sample application that show's how to implement ISettingStore and storing the settings in the database?
The only post I could find so far is this, but the link hikalkan supplies is broken.
Thanks for any help,
Joe
ABP stores settings on memory with default values. When you insert a new setting value into database, then it reads from database and overrides the default value. So basically when database has no settings then it means all the settings are on default values. Setting values are stored in AbpSettings table.
To start using settings mechanism. Create your own SettingProvider inherited from SettingProvider. Initialize it in your module (eg:
ModuleZeroSampleProjectApplicationModule).
As SettingProvider is automatically registed to dependency injection; You can inject ISettingManager wherever you want.
public class MySettingProvider : SettingProvider
{
public override IEnumerable<SettingDefinition> GetSettingDefinitions(SettingDefinitionProviderContext context)
{
return new[]
{
new SettingDefinition(
"SmtpServerAddress",
"127.0.0.1"
),
new SettingDefinition(
"PassiveUsersCanNotLogin",
"true",
scopes: SettingScopes.Application | SettingScopes.Tenant
),
new SettingDefinition(
"SiteColorPreference",
"red",
scopes: SettingScopes.User,
isVisibleToClients: true
)
};
}
}
In application services and controllers you don't need to inject ISettingManager
(because there's already property injected) and you can directly use SettingManager property. Forexample :
//Getting a boolean value (async call)
var value1 = await SettingManager.GetSettingValueAsync<bool>("PassiveUsersCanNotLogin");
And for the other classes (like Domain Services) can inject ISettingManager
public class UserEmailer : ITransientDependency
{
private readonly ISettingManager _settingManager;
public UserEmailer(ISettingManager settingManager)
{
_settingManager = settingManager;
}
[UnitOfWork]
public virtual async Task TestMethod()
{
var settingValue = _settingManager.GetSettingValueForUser("SmtpServerAddress", tenantAdmin.TenantId, tenantAdmin.Id);
}
}
Note: To modify a setting you can use these methods in SettingManager ChangeSettingForApplicationAsync, ChangeSettingForTenantAsync and ChangeSettingForUserAsync

Get Active Directory User Information With Windows Authentication in MVC 4

I am working on an MVC 4 intranet application and am using Windows authentication. I would like to add to the user object that the authentication method uses (#User) and get that data from active directory (such as email, phone number, etc).
I know I can create a custom Authorize attribute and add it to the controller that all of my other controllers inherit from, but I don't know if this is the right method to do what I want.
My end goal is simple, I want #User object to have additional properties that are populated via Active Directory. Thanks for any help you can offer.
I was just about to add my own question to StackOverflow with my solution to help others with this issue, when I saw your existing question. It seems like this would be a very common thing, but the information about how to do it only is spread out between multiple sources and hard to track down. There's not just one complete resource, so hopefully this will help you and others.
The best way to do this is use a UserPrincipal extension. Basically, you're subclassing UserPrincipal from System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement and adding your own additional properties. This is enabled via the ExtensionGet and ExtensionSet (somewhat magical) methods.
[DirectoryRdnPrefix("CN")]
[DirectoryObjectClass("user")]
public class UserPrincipalExtended : UserPrincipal
{
public UserPrincipalExtended(PrincipalContext context) : base(context)
{
}
public UserPrincipalExtended(PrincipalContext context, string samAccountName, string password, bool enabled)
: base(context, samAccountName, password, enabled)
{
}
[DirectoryProperty("title")]
public string Title
{
get
{
if (ExtensionGet("title").Length != 1)
return null;
return (string)ExtensionGet("title")[0];
}
set
{
ExtensionSet( "title", value );
}
}
[DirectoryProperty("department")]
public string Department
{
get
{
if (ExtensionGet("department").Length != 1)
return null;
return (string)ExtensionGet("department")[0];
}
set
{
ExtensionSet("department", value);
}
}
public static new UserPrincipalExtended FindByIdentity(PrincipalContext context, string identityValue)
{
return (UserPrincipalExtended)FindByIdentityWithType(context, typeof(UserPrincipalExtended), identityValue);
}
public static new UserPrincipalExtended FindByIdentity(PrincipalContext context, IdentityType identityType, string identityValue)
{
return (UserPrincipalExtended)FindByIdentityWithType(context, typeof(UserPrincipalExtended), identityType, identityValue);
}
}
The two attributes on the class need to be customized to your instance of AD. The value for DirectoryRdnPrefix needs to be the RDN (relative distinguished name) in AD, while the value for DirectoryObjectClass needs to be the directory object type name in AD for a userObject class. For a typical AD Domain Services setup, they should both be as used in the code presented above, but for an LDS setup, they could be different. I've added two new properties that my organization uses, "title" and "department". From that, you can get an idea of how to add any other property you like: basically you just create a property using the template I've provided here. The property can be named anything you like, but the string value passed to DirectoryProperty and inside the code block should match up to a property name from AD. With that in place, you can use PrincipalContext with your subclass instead of UserPrincipal to get back a user object with the properties you need added.
UserPrincipalExtended user = UserPrincipalExtended.FindByIdentity(
new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain), User.Identity.Name);
And access your property like any other on the UserPrincipal instance:
// User's title
user.Title
If you're unfamiliar with System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.UserPrincipal, there's a few user properties baked in: GivenName, Surname, DisplayName, etc. In particular to your circumstance, since you mentioned phone and email specifically, there's VoiceTelephoneNumber and EmailAddress. You can see the full list in the MSDN docs. If all you need is the built-in information, you don't need to extend UserPrincipal as I showed above. You would just do:
UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(
new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain), User.Identity.Name);
But, 9 times out of 10, the built-ins won't be enough, so it's good to know how to get the rest easily.
Finally, I didn't want to have to add #using lines to any view that uses this, so I went ahead and added the namespaces to my Views folder's web.config. That part is important, it needs to be added to the Views folder's web.config, not the project's (and each Area's individual Views folder if you're utilizing Areas).
<system.web.webPages.razor>
...
<pages pageBaseType="System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage">
<namespaces>
...
<add namespace="System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement" />
<add namespace="Namespace.For.Your.Extension" />
</namespaces>
</pages>
</system.web.webPages.razor>

How to keep your MVC controllers DRY for Edit->Save->ValidateFail

I've got a Manage User event that takes an an optional userID and displays a user edit screen. There is a manageUserViewModel to go with this screen.
My Manage page has some dependencies - eg, PageTitle, what method to submit to, etc.
If I validate-fail, I need to show the manage screen again, but this time, using the view-model that was passed into the same method.
Supplying these dependencies in the fail scenario isn't very DRY.
How do I step repeating the dependencies? I tried putting them into a separate method, but that does not feel right.
public ActionResult Manage(Guid? UserID)
{
User user = this._UserLogic.GetUser(UserID);
ViewBag.Title = "User List";
ViewBag.OnSubmit = "Save";
ManageUserViewModel uvm = Mapper.Map<User, ManageUserViewModel>(user);
return View("Manage", uvm);
}
[AcceptVerbs("POST")]
public ActionResult Save(ManageUserViewModel uvm)
{
User user = this._UserLogic.GetUser(uvm.UserID);
if (!ModelState.IsValid)
// This is not very DRY!!!
ViewBag.Title = "Manage User";
ViewBag.OnSubmit = "Save";
return View("Manage", uvm);
}
Mapper.Map<ManageUserViewModel, User>(uvm, user );
this._UserLogic.SaveUser(user);
return RedirectToAction("Manage", new { UserID = user.ID });
}
I think you misunderstand DRY. DRY does not mean "NEVER repeat yourself", it means that you should not repeat yourself when it makes sense not to.
Different views have different requirements, and creating a complex structure just to avoid repeating yourself violates other best practices, like KISS, and SRP.
SOLID is interesting because Single Responsibility Principle is often at odds with Don't Repeat Yourself, and you have to come up with a balance. In most cases, DRY loses because SRP is far more important.
It looks to me like you have code here that is handling multiple responsibilities just so you can avoid writing similar code more than once. I disagree with doing that, because each view has different responsibilities and different requirements.
I would suggest just creating separate controller actions, views, and models for each action, particularly if the validation requirements are different for them. There may be a few things you can do (like using Partial Views or Editor Templates) to reduce repetition, but in general don't add lots of complexity just to avoid repetition.
You could add the 'Manager User' Title and 'Save' OnSubmit strings as properties of on the ManageUserViewModel. This means that you would not have to add them to the ViewBag each time you called Save.
You could also make a ManageUserService which could be responsible for the AutoMapper mappings and saving the user.
You code would then look like this:
public ActionResult Manage(Guid? UserID)
{
var uvm = _userService.GetById(UserId);
return View("Manage", uvm);
}
[AcceptVerbs("POST")]
public ActionResult Save(ManageUserViewModel uvm)
{
if (!ModelState.IsValid)
{
return View("Save", uvm);
}
_userService.Save(uvm);
return RedirectToAction("Manage", new { UserID = uvm.ID });
}
Just put the CRUD logic and AutoMapping functionality in the a class called UserService, and instance of which can be injected using Inversion of Control into your controller.
If you don't want to hard-code your string values into the view model itself, then you could add the values to an ApplicationResources file and reference those from the view model.
You will have to find some way to preserve this information between requests, which either means passing it back and forth between the client and server or saving it on the server. Saving it on the server means something like session but this feels a little heavy to me. You could add it to your ViewModel as #Ryan Spears suggested. To me that feels a little wrong, polluting the ViewModel with something that might be considered metadata. But that is just an opinion and I am not discrediting his answer because it is valid. Another possibility would be to just add the extra fields to the parameter list of the action method itself and use hidden fields.
[AcceptVerbs("POST")]
public ActionResult Save(ManageUserViewModel uvm, string title, string onSubmit)
{
...
}
In the form add:
<input type="hidden" name="title" value="#ViewBag.Title" />
<input type="hidden" name="onSubmit" value="#ViewBag.OnSubmit" />
This is essentially the same concept and solution as adding them to the ViewModel except in this situation they are not actually part of the ViewModel.
You can use RedirectToAction() and then export and import your tempdata (to maintain the ModelState) if you're worried about the 3 lines.
Personally I'd find it a lot more readable if you kept the logic in the POST version of the method, as you're performing something slightly different from the GET method, therefore not really repeating yourself. You could you probably keep the two ViewBag variables you have inside the View, and then there's no repetition at all.
As a side note: [HttpPost] now supersedes [AcceptVerbs]
We have come up with another solution that I thought I would share.
This based on the view-model containing info on what actions it can do, but we feel the controller should be specifying these (ie, controlling what actions different links route to) these because we have cases where the view-models are reused across actions. EG, the case where when you edit you can edit a template or an instance of something - the UI is the same, the only difference is the actions you post to/cancel from.
We abstracted away the part of the view-model that contains the data bound properties and the view model that contains other things we need for the view to render. We call the property-only object a DTO - it's not a true dto because it contains validation attributes.
We figure that we might be able to re-use these DTO's in the future for ajax or even XML requests - it, can keep validation DRY.
Anyway - here is an example of the code, we are happy with it (for now) and hope it helps others.
[HttpGet]
[ValidateInput(false)]
public virtual ActionResult ManageUser(ManageUserDTO dto, bool PopulateFromObject = true)
{
User user = this._UserLogic.GetUser(dto.UserID);
if (PopulateFromObject)
Mapper.Map<User, ManageUserDTO>(user, dto);
ManageUserViewModel vm = new ManageUserViewModel()
{
DTO = dto,
PageTitle = Captions.GetCaption("pageTitle_EditUser"),
OnSubmit = GetSubmitEventData(this.ControllerName, "SaveUser"),
OnCancel = GetCancelEventData(this.ControllerName, "ListUsers"),
};
return View("ManageUser", vm);
}
[HttpPost]
public virtual ActionResult SaveUser(ManageUserViewModel vm)
{
User user = this._UserLogic.GetUser(vm.DTO.UserID);
if (!ModelState.IsValid)
{
return ManageUser(vm.DTO, false);
}
Mapper.Map<ManageUserDTO, User>(vm.DTO, user);
this._UserLogic.SaveUser(user);
TempData.AddSuccess(Captions.GetCaption("message_UserSavedSuccessfuly"));
return RedirectToAction("ManageUser", new { UserID = user.ID });
}
The model-binder will set any URI variables into the dto in the get action. My logic layer will return a new User object if a call to getUserByID(null) is made.

How do you set the Customvalidation in Metadata file, If the Metadata is in different Model project

My silverlight solution has 3 project files
Silverlight part(Client)
Web part(Server)
Entity model(I maintained the edmx along with Metadata in a seperate project)
Metadata file is a partial class with relavent dataannotation validations.
[MetadataTypeAttribute(typeof(User.UserMetadata))]
public partial class User
{
[CustomValidation(typeof(UsernameValidator), "IsUsernameAvailable")]
public string UserName { get; set; }
}
Now my question is where I need to keep this class UsernameValidator
If my Metadata class and edmx are on Server side(Web) then I know I need to create a .shared.cs class in my web project, then add the proper static method.
My IsUserAvailable method intern will call a domainservice method as part of asyc validation.
[Invoke]
public bool IsUsernameAvailable(string username)
{
return !Membership.FindUsersByName(username).Cast<MembershipUser>().Any();
}
If my metadata class is in the same project as my domain service is in then I can call domain service method from my UsernameValidator.Shared.cs class.
But here my entity models and Metadata are in seperate library.
Any idea will be appreciated
Jeff wonderfully explained the asyc validation here
http://jeffhandley.com/archive/2010/05/26/asyncvalidation-again.aspx
but that will work only when your model, metadata and Shared class, all are on server side.
There is a kind of hack to do this. It is not a clean way to do it it, but this is how it would probably work.
Because the .shared takes care of the code generation it doesn't complain about certain compile errors in the #if brackets of the code. So what you can do is create a Validator.Shared.cs in any project and just make sure it generates to the silverlight side.
Add the following code. and dont forget the namespaces.
#if SILVERLIGHT
using WebProject.Web.Services;
using System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Client;
#endif
#if SILVERLIGHT
UserContext context = new UserContext();
InvokeOperation<bool> availability = context.DoesUserExist(username);
//code ommited. use what logic you want, maybe Jeffs post.
#endif
The compiler will ignore this code part because it does not meet the condition of the if statement. Meanwhile on the silverlight client side it tries to recompile the shared validator where it DOES meet the condition of the if-statement.
Like I said. This is NOT a clean way to do this. And you might have trouble with missing namespaces. You need to resolve them in the non-generated Validator.shared.cs to finally let it work in silverlight. If you do this right you can have the validation in silverlight with invoke operations. But not in your project with models and metadata like you would have with Jeff's post.
Edit: I found a cleaner and better way
you can create a partial class on the silverlight client side and doing the following
public partial class User
{
partial void OnUserNameChanging(string value)
{
//must be new to check for this validation rule
if(EntityState == EntityState.New)
{
var ctx = new UserContext();
ctx.IsValidUserName(value).Completed += (s, args) =>
{
InvokeOperation invop = (InvokeOperation) s;
bool isValid = (bool) invop.Value;
if(!isValid)
{
ValidationResult error = new ValidationResult(
"Username already exists",
new string[] {"UserName"});
ValidationErrors.Add(error;
}
};
}
}
}
This is a method generated by WCF RIA Services and can be easily partialled and you can add out-of-band validation like this. This is a much cleaner way to do this, but still this validation now only exists in the silverlight client side.
Hope this helps