Table of contents for May/Jun 2023 in CODE Magazine

EDITORIAL The queue to the 2023 SXSW keynote seemed manageable. Our intrepid editor was ready to squat at the opening session in order to guarantee a spot in a later keynote that was sure to be popular. But on this day, the conference gods didn't smile on our venturesome attendee, as the line was cut off just as entrance was imminent. What could be done? One possibility would be to play the “press card,” which had only a limited chance of success, or he could simply find another session to fill time until a seat in the main hall could be acquired. “Let's pivot,” he said to himself. A new session was quickly targeted. With a few minutes to spare, our valiant editor found a seat where he would spend…

How isolated are your tests and are they truly unit tests? Perhaps you've fallen into the pitfall of having several God Objects within your code and now you just have integration tests. It might be time to start using Moq, the easy-to-implement mocking library, ubiguitously used within Microsoft Docs for .NET. Moq can help ensure that your units under test have the same state as your application, and even make it easier to enforce shared test structure, such as through the Arrange, Act, Assert (AAA) model. It can help you write tests that are in complete control of the functionality and expectations, where the test adheres to the design pattern of dependency injection and the principle of inversion of control (IOC). Stop focusing your tests on the set up of…

Very often, when people talk about data analytics, Pandas is the first library that comes to mind. And, of course, in more recent times, Polars is fast gaining traction as a much faster and more efficient DataFrame library. Despite the popularity of these libraries, SQL (Structured Query Language) remains the language that most developers are familiar with. If your data is stored in SQL-supported databases, SQL is one of the easiest and most natural ways for you to retrieve your data. Recently, with Python becoming the lingua franca of data science, most attention has shifted to techniques on how to manipulate data in tabular format (most notably stored as a DataFrame object). However, the real lingua franca of data is actually SQL. And because most developers are familiar with SQL,…

CODA Is the implication that bad fences make for bad neighbors? Not any more than good fences making good neighbors. As a rule, constraints by way of clear boundaries are valuable guidance because they remove variables from consideration. The fewer variables you need to consider, the simpler the problem domain. Where should those fence posts be set? How should they be set? For such guidance, I'll turn away from the usual technical context toward some other, broader alternative context: the law. There's no aspect of your personal and professional life that isn't subject to the law. The law, like other rules you're subject to, selfimposed or not, are constraints. Perhaps if we understand how those broader constraints are considered, defined, and imposed, we can gain a better understanding of how…

In my previous article in CODE Magazine (https://codemag.com/Article/2303021/Chrome-Debugging-Tips), I shared some tips and tricks I use with Chrome DevTools. To refresh your memory, Chrome DevTools is that window that launches when you hit F12 on Windows or CMD_OPT_I on a Mac. If you've developed for the web, be it HTML, CSS, or JS, I'm sure you've used them at some point. www.winsmarts.com @sahilmalik Sahil Malik is a Microsoft MVP, INETA speaker, a .NET author, consultant, and trainer. Sahil loves interacting with fellow geeks in real time. His talks and trainings are full of humor and practical nuggets. His areas of expertise are cross-platform Mobile app development, Microsoft anything, and security and identity. My focus wasn't to talk about the basics of Chrome DevTools, but more about the hidden, and very…

In this article, we're going to talk about using C# Reflection functionality from a scripting language. The main idea is that very well-known and debugged parts of C# code can be reused in scripting. A use case for using Reflection and a scripting language might be a scenario where there's already a client class library that does something useful (in C#) and you want to additionally control it from the scripting code to get more flexibility.As an example, we're going to use the PCmover service developed by Laplink Software. PCmover helps you to upgrade an old PC to a new one by transferring all of your files and installed programs to your new computer so that you're up and running on your new computer very quickly and easily. Why would…

Laravel 9 provides a built-in authentication system for securing your application. There's always a restricted area in your application that requires you to grant access to allocated users. To do so, you need to identify the user trying to access this area and check whether they're allowed access. This is called Authentication and is a general component in Laravel and web applications on the internet. Once you've identified the user and allowed access, you need to check what actions this user can perform. For instance, perhaps the user can create new records but not delete existing ones. This is also called Authorization and is a standard practice in Laravel and most web applications. bhaidar@gmail.com https://www.bhaidar.dev @bhaidar Bilal Haidar is an accomplished author, Microsoft MVP of 10 years, ASP.NET Insider, and…

Many developers use JavaScript to add client-side functionality to their web pages. JavaScript can be used to create server-side web pages and web APIs too. In this three-part article series, you're introduced to Node.js and Express and you'll learn their roles in the creation of a web server. You're going to build a new web server from scratch, create some routes to return data, and Learn how to modularize your web application. You'll be guided step-by-step to creating a set of APIs to return an array of objects or a single object, search for a set of objects, and add, edit, and delete objects. If you've never used Node.js or Express to build a server, don't worry: this article has everything you need to learn the basics of working with…

I've been writing software for nearly 30 years. Over that time, I've learned a lot about what it takes to write code that works well, along with understanding that this educational journey is never over. One rule of thumb I follow is “automate successes.” Whenever I encounter a pattern or approach in the programming language I'm using that leads to an improvement, such as better performance or code that's easier to read, I reuse it in the future. What's even better is if I can find a way to enforce these good tactics without having to remember to do them manually. In C# 9, a new feature called “source generators” was added. This allows developers to create code that generates new code during the compilation process. This can eliminate repetitive…

to. You can be annoyed at your neighbor all you want. But under the circumstances, absent fraud or some other actionable untoward conduct, what did your neighbor do to you that you didn't do to yourself? Multi-team projects share some of the same issues. For example, there may be new integrations to implement. Some might have thirdparty services and some might have internal legacy applications that must integrated in ways not foreseen in its design. How this legacy application comes to the party is an important consideration. The app's arrival also means the arrival of a new team. Fences between teams are about clearly defined responsibilities, some shared and some individual. Fences are not about siloed activity. There still needs to be cooperative behavior. No team on a common project…