A quick overview on applying styling to code snippets in your website. The library that I use across this site is called PrismJs it's an easy and clean JavaScript library for styling and highlighting code. It's simple to configure download and use, so I will cover the steps I used to integrate PrismJs into this site below.The following steps outline the implementation used on this website which is built using NextJs & ReactJs and dynamically pulls the page data from an API.My requirement is:<ul class="list-unstyled"><li>I need to be able to dynamically highlight code which is retrieved from an API request. </li></ul>Firstly you need to go the PrismJs website and generate/download a JavaScript and CSS bundle for use in your site. Currently you need to go the download page <a href="https://prismjs.com/download.html" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://prismjs.com/download.html</a> and select the appropriate themes, languages and plugins.There are various options you can use to custom the bundles from colour to adding extra functionality like line numbers. Store the downloaded files in a suitable location for future use.Copy the JavaScript and CSS bundles to the /public folder (e.g. /public/assets/prism.css|.js) of the NextJs application where they can be referenced. Ensure that you place the CSS reference in the NextJs Head tag on the relevant page where you need the code highlighting, e.g.<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-jsx">import React from "react";
import Head from "next/head";

const Meta = () =&gt; {
	return (
		&lt;Head&gt;
			&lt;link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/css/prism.css" type="text/css"/&gt;
		&lt;/Head&gt;
	);
};

export default Meta;</code></pre>Place the JavaScript reference somewhere towards the end of the page - just above the body tag, e.g.<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-javascript">&lt;script src="/assets/js/prism/prism.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</code></pre>The next step is apply the markup for the code that needs to be styled in the appropriate component. This code comes directly from the API hence it's rendered as dangerous HTML in reactJs e.g.<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-html">&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code class="language-bash"&gt;echo styling looks good&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;</code></pre>At the start of the component function add the following code, which will apply the code highlighting/styling<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-jsx">React.useEffect(() =&gt; {
	setTimeout(() =&gt; (window as any).Prism.highlightAll(), 0);
}, []);</code></pre>Next you'll have neatly, responsive styled code.

The library that I use across this site is called PrismJs it's an easy and clean JavaScript library for styling and highlighting code. It's simple to configure download and use, so I will 

Code highlighting with PrismJs

Below is a list of the different tools that I use that range from VPNs, encrypted emails and secure messaging. These tools allow me to secure different communication points across my public and private life.Some of the tools are essential and I would recommend that you should definitely be using them:<ul class="list-unstyled"><li>VPNs - secures end to end communication between your device and the internet</li><li>Password managers - generates and stores passwords for all your accounts.</li></ul>Using a good VPN - one that log your network traffic and still provides low latency is important as it reduces the potential of an intruder intercepting communications between you and the internet.Some services, like Google & Microsoft now support password-less authentication which I use however these services are still backed by passwords by default meaning that it's important to ensure that you have a secure and complex password which gets reviewed regularly. Having a password manager allows you to do that. Below are some of the tools I use:<div class="table-responsive-sm table-responsive-md"><table class="table table-striped"><thead class="thead-dark"><tr><th>Category</th><th>Application</th><th>Platform</th><th>Usage</th><th>Pricing</th><th>Link</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th scope="row">VPN</th><td>NordVPN</td><td>Mobile / Desktop</td><td>There are many VPN clients that exists however I chose NordVPN (at the time) because of it's easy of use and number of servers dedicated in the UK.</td><td>Pricing varies <a href="https://nordvpn.com/pricing/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://nordvpn.com/pricing/</a></td><td><a href="https://nordvpn.com/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://nordvpn.com/</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row">DNS sinkhole</th><td>PiHole</td><td>Network</td><td>This is a must have for any home network enthusiast. Once configured correctly on your home network it will (by default) block known DNS lookups for malicious and tracking sites. This improves the quality and speed of your home network's internet whilst making it more secure.</td><td>Free</td><td><a href="https://pi-hole.net/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://pi-hole.net/</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Firewall</th><td>Unifi Controller</td><td>Network</td><td>The Unifi ecosystem is extremely powerful and offers many features (far too many to mention here). One such feature is a simple firewall which can be used to control how traffic flows in your home network. <a href="https://www.mackolicious.com/blog/secure-iot-network" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://www.mackolicious.com/blog/secure-iot-network</a></td><td>Free (with Unifi Controller)</td><td><a href="https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012282453-UniFi-Set-up-a-UniFi-Network-Controller" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012282453-UniFi-Set-up-a-UniFi-Network-Controller</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Email</th><td>ProtonMail</td><td>Mobile / Desktop</td><td>Proton offers a suite of applications built on secure protocols and implementations. One such application is ProtonMail which offers end to end email encryption with various tiers.</td><td>Free</td><td><a href="https://protonmail.com/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://protonmail.com/</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Password manager</th><td>LastPass</td><td>Mobile / Desktop</td><td>LastPass is similar to other password manager in it's offering and has a well known process for storing your 'vault' of secure passwords.</td><td>Free</td><td><a href="https://www.lastpass.com/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://www.lastpass.com/</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Browser</th><td>TOR Browser</td><td>Mobile / Desktop</td><td>I use the TOR browser to offer me secure, anonymise browsing protection. No tracking, no logging and in-conjuction with DuckDuckGo there's also secure web searching.</td><td>Free</td><td><a href="https://www.torproject.org/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://www.torproject.org/</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row">File sharing</th><td>Keybase</td><td>Mobile / Desktop</td><td>Keybase is my alternative to the popular productivity tool Slack. It offers end to end encryption, encryption at rest, public key encryption and a host of other secure features for communication. Making it a great tool for sending confidential information.</td><td>Free</td><td><a href="https://keybase.io/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://keybase.io/</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Messaging</th><td>Signal</td><td>Mobile / Desktop</td><td>Signal is an alternative to your phone's default messaging app or your phone's default SMS app. Once you're correspondents have Signal installed you'll be able to communicate securely with them, it also supports expiring messages.</td><td>Free</td><td><a href="https://signal.org/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">https://signal.org/</a></td></tr></tbody></table></div>There are still a bunch of other tools that provide security benefits, e.g. MFA, anti-virus. But this is a summary of some of the tools I believe are important.

The security tools I use range from VPNs, encrypted emails and secure messaging. These tools facilitate different needs and allow me access different security protocols when necessary.

Security tools I use to facilitate secure communication on my devices

Polly is a .net library / SDK which can be used to perform policies on HTTP requests, for example, retrying a request until a specific response code is returned. The <a href="https://github.com/App-vNext/Polly" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Polly GitHub Documentation</a> on the capabilities of this library along with examples can be found on their <a href="https://github.com/App-vNext/Polly" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Polly GitHub Documentation</a> page.I will implement a policy that waits 5 seconds and then retries a request. This will happen indefinitely and will timeout according to the infrastructure policies, e.g. if this were hosted as an Azure function the timeout will default to what is set in Azure. The current retry logic is based on the response status code and will retry when it receives a 200 status code.<ul class="list-unstyled"><li>1. .net core 3.1</li><li>2. Polly 7.2.1</li><li>3. Http Extensions 5.0.0</li></ul>This is based on using a API hosted using .net core's web api calling a down stream API. The first step is to install the relevant libraries, run the following command to install the Polly SDK and the HTTP extensions into the web api application.<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash">dotnet add package Polly 
dotnet add package Microsoft.Extensions.Http</code></pre>Create a new class called ServiceCollectionExtensions for applying the registration and configuration of the Polly policies within the application. This will use the policy registry which will allow you to create a factory of policies that can be retrieved by using their names. This code uses .net core's <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.http.httpclient?view=net-5.0" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">.net core HTTP client API</a> to make the downstream request.<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-csharp">using System;
using System.net;
using System.net.Http;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using Polly;
using Polly.Registry;

namespace WebApiWork
{
	public static class ServiceCollectionExtensions
	{
		public static IServiceCollection AddRetryPolicy(this IServiceCollection services)
		{
			const int retryIntervalInSeconds = 5;

			var retryPolicy = Policy
				.HandleResult&lt;HttpResponseMessage&gt;(r =&gt; r.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
				.WaitAndRetryForeverAsync(retries =&gt;
				{
					Console.WriteLine($"Request attempt: {retries}");
					return TimeSpan.FromSeconds(retryIntervalInSeconds);
				});

			var policyRegistry = new PolicyRegistry();
			policyRegistry.Add("InfiniteRetryPolicy", retryPolicy);
			return services.AddScoped&lt;IReadOnlyPolicyRegistry&lt;string&gt;&gt;(s =&gt; policyRegistry);
		}
	}
}
</code></pre>Next, we'll need to add the classes responsible for making the HTTP requests and utilise the Polly retry logic. For this we'll create the following classes: IBlogPostService.cs, BlogPostService.cs and Post.csCreate a IBlogPostService.cs class with the following code:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-csharp">using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace WebApiWork
{
	public interface IBlogPostService
	{
		Task&lt;IEnumerable&lt;Post&gt;&gt; GetPosts();
	}
}
</code></pre>Next create a Post.cs class with the following<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-csharp">namespace WebApiWork
{
	public class Post
	{
		public string Heading { get; set; }
		public string Title { get; set; }
	}
}
</code></pre>Lastly, create the BlogPostService.cs class with the code below<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-csharp">using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.net.Http;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Polly;
using Polly.Registry;
using static System.Text.Json.JsonSerializer;

namespace WebApiWork
{
	public class BlogPostService : IBlogPostService
	{
		private readonly HttpClient _client;
		private readonly IAsyncPolicy&lt;HttpResponseMessage&gt; _retryPolicy;

		public BlogPostService(HttpClient client, IReadOnlyPolicyRegistry&lt;string&gt; policyRegistry)
		{
			_client = client;

			_retryPolicy = policyRegistry.Get&lt;IAsyncPolicy&lt;HttpResponseMessage&gt;&gt;("InfiniteRetryPolicy");
		}

		public async Task&lt;IEnumerable&lt;Post&gt;&gt; GetPosts()
		{
			var response = await _retryPolicy.ExecuteAsync(() =&gt; _client.GetAsync("api/posts"));

			var converted = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

			var posts = Deserialize&lt;IEnumerable&lt;Post&gt;&gt;(converted);

			return posts;
		}
	}
}
</code></pre>We now have the basis for implementing the retry Polly logic on our downstream API. The final step is to wire all this logic together in the Startup.cs file; update the ConfigureServices method to look like the following:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-csharp">public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
	services.AddControllers();
	services.AddSwaggerGen(c =&gt;
	{
		c.SwaggerDoc("v1", new OpenApiInfo { Title = "webapi", Version = "v1" });
	});

	services.AddHttpClient&lt;IBlogPostService, BlogPostService&gt;(client =&gt;
	{
		client.BaseAddress = new Uri(Configuration["BaseUrl"]);
	});

	services.AddRetryPolicy();
}
</code></pre>Once you've added an endpoint URI to the appsettings.json file you will be able to run the code and via the console logs view logs similar to<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash">info: System.net.Http.HttpClient.IBlogPostService.LogicalHandler[101]
		End processing HTTP request after 8822.8192ms - 200
System.net.Http.HttpClient.IBlogPostService.LogicalHandler: Information: End processing HTTP request after 8822.8192ms - 200
Request attempt: 1
</code></pre>

An example on how to use Polly's SDK to retry HTTP requests in .net. The Polly SDK has several policies which allow developers to express HTTP logic such as retries.

Using Polly to retry HTTP requests in .net

I have a reactjs component that uses the Intl.NumberFormat class. Here's a snippet:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-js">import * as React from "react";

export default function App({ data }) {
	function formatUnit(value) {
		return new Intl.NumberFormat("en-GB", {
			style: "unit",
			unit: "kilometer"
		}).format(value);
	}

	return (
		&lt;div className="data-style"&gt;
			&lt;strong&gt;
				{formatUnit(
					data.RawValue
				)}
			&lt;/strong&gt;
		&lt;/div&gt;
	);
}</code></pre>The above shows a snippet of a component which takes in some data and then formats that data according to the FormatUnitI have the following test code that uses Jest:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-js">import React from "react";
import App from "../index";
import { render } from "@testing-library/react";

describe("&lt;App /&gt;", () =&gt; {

	let data = {
		rawValue = "1234789"
	};

	test("should match snapshot", () =&gt; {
		const { container } = render(
			&lt;App
				data={data}
			/&gt;
		);

		expect(container).toMatchSnapshot();
	});
});
</code></pre>When running this test using Jest I get the following error:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash">FAIL tests/index.test.js (9.51s)

	&lt;App /&gt;

	✕ should match snapshot (102ms)

	&lt;App /&gt; › should match snapshot

	Error: Uncaught [RangeError: Value unit out of range for numberformat options property style]</code></pre>This error is the result of using the Intl.NumberFormat library and running in NodeJs. The easiest method to resolve this error is to mock the function implementation during the beforeEach method by using jest.fn as follows:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-js">import React from "react";
import App from "../index";
import { render } from "@testing-library/react";

describe("&lt;App /&gt;", () =&gt; {
	let mockNumberFormatFunction = {};
	beforeEach(() =&gt; {
		const mockFormatExpression = {
			format: value =&gt; value.toString()
		};
		mockNumberFormatFunction = Intl.NumberFormat = jest
			.fn()
			.mockImplementation(() =&gt; mockFormatExpression);
	});

	afterEach(() =&gt; {
		jest.resetAllMocks();
	});

	let data = {
		rawValue = "1234789"
	};

	test("should match snapshot", () =&gt; {
		const { container } = render(
			&lt;App
				data={data}
			/&gt;
		);

		expect(container).toMatchSnapshot();
	});
});
</code></pre>By mocking out the NumberFormat functionality it ensures that the mock is called instead of the actual implementation which causes the error.

I have a reactjs component that uses the Intl.NumberFormat class

Testing Intl.NumberFormat in ReactJs using Jest

Reducing the amount of 3rd party scripts on your site is essential for performance and security reasons.It's inevitable that at some point you will need a 3rd party script on your site, e.g. you may want to track page analytics such as page views and device usage. For this post I am going to replace my Google analytics tracking tag with Google tag manager which will form the basis for replacing any compatible tag with Google tag manager.First step is to sign up to <a href="https://tagmanager.google.com/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Google Tag Manager</a> and create an account.You'll need to place two scripts on your page. If they are not automatically displaced you can show them by clicking on the tag link on the top right section of the page:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/google-tag-manager/tag-generator-link.png" title="Google Tag Generator" alt="Google Tag Generator" />Copy those scripts to the top of the head and body section respectively on your site as per the instructions.Now it's time to add the Google analytics tag. On the tag manager main page click on the Add a new tag > link:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/google-tag-manager/add-new-tag.png" title="Add new tag" alt="Add new tag" />Choose Google Analytics: Universal Analytics:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/google-tag-manager/tag-selector.png" title="Google analytics tag selector" alt="Google analytics tag selector" />After clicking on Google Analytics: Universal Analytics another side pane will open where you can enter the tag's name and provide some configuration. I chose the following:<ol><li>Tag Type: Google Analytics</li><li>Track Type: Page View</li><li>Google Analytics Settings: New Variable....</li></ol><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/google-tag-manager/analytics-tag-creation.png" title="Google analytics tag creation side bar" alt="Google analytics tag creation side bar" />Click New Variable... for Google Analytics Settings. This will open another sidebar where you can supply the following settings: <ol><li>Variable Name: Tracking ID Variable</li><li>Variable Type: Google Analytics settings</li><li>Tracking ID: [This is the tracking ID you can obtain from your Google Analytics count, see <a href="https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/9207621#ga_id" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Obtaining Google Analytics ID</a>]</li><li>Cookie Domain: auto</li></ol><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/google-tag-manager/tracking-variable.png" title="Google tag manager variable form" alt="Google tag manager variable form" />Save all the changes and then we can preview them to make sure everything is working correctly. Click on the preview button located in the top right corner and then the page should go into preview mode:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/google-tag-manager/preview-mode.png" title="Google tag manager preview mode" alt="Google tag manager preview mode" />With the page in preview mode we're now able to go into the site in another tab where the tag manager console should appear on the page (at the bottom)<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/google-tag-manager/tag-manager-console.png" title="Google tag manager console window" alt="Google tag manager console window" />Hopefully all is well, and there are no errors displayed. You can check the Firing Status and the errors tab to be sure. If you have the <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics-debugger/jnkmfdileelhofjcijamephohjechhna/related" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Google Analytics Debugger</a> installed you can open the browser dev tools console window and have a look at the logs being generated to ensure that they are correct.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/google-tag-manager/analytics-debugging-console.png" title="Dev tools console window" alt="Dev tools console window" />The existing Google analytics tag can be removed from your site and then those changes can be published.

Reducing the amount of 3rd party scripts on your site is essential for performance and security reasons.

Replacing Google Analytics with Google Tag Manager

I've been meaning to this for a while but never had time but now that I'm isolated I have all the time in the world.Before I put out the steps I took to segregate my network I'll provide a list of the devices I am currently using and the software versions.My network is driven by following devices:<ol><li>Unifi USG: <a href="https://www.ui.com/unifi-routing/usg/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Unifi USG</a></li><li>Unifi 8 Port Switch 60W: <a href="https://www.ui.com/unifi-switching/unifi-switch-8/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Unifi 8 Port PoE Switch</a></li><li>Unifi in-Wall AC access point: <a href="https://inwall.ui.com/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Unifi In-Wall</a></li><li>Raspberry PI 4: Running unifi controller v5.12.66, PiHole v4.4 <a href="https://pi-hole.net/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">PiHole</a></li></ol>I have several connected clients (devices) at any one time, most of which are IoT devices, because of security concerns I want to place all of these devices on a separate network where I'll apply firewall rules which will control the network access.I currently have the following network setup:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/secure-iot-network/topology.png" title="Network topology" alt="Network topology" />These instructions are specific to Unifi however the general principal should be applicable to other technologies. The main features that your network needs are: the ability to support virtual networks and the ability to configure firewall settings.Firstly we'll need to create the network<ol><li>Go to Networks > Local Networks</li><li>Give the network a meaningful name, I called mine IoT.</li><li>Ensure that it's purpose (category) is set to Corporate.</li><li>Specify a VLAN ID, I used 2. You just need to specific a numeric value that's not already in use.</li><li>Specify a subnet/gateway CIDR address, e.g. I used 192.168.1.2/24. This allows for 254 IP addresses which is completely overkill but it works.</li><li>For the DCHP range I specified the range: 192.168.1.6 - 192.168.1.254</li><li>I have a Pi Hole DNS server on my network so I specify it's IP as the DNS server. If you don't have your own custom DNS server you can leave this value as automatic or set it to your current default.</li></ol><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/secure-iot-network/iot-network-create.png" title="Creating an IoT network" alt="Creating an IoT network" />You should now have a minimum of two local networks<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/secure-iot-network/networks.png" title="Networks" alt="Networks" />Once the network has been created I then went on to create the wireless network. This wireless network will be assigned an SSID which will be exclusively used for IoT devices.<ol><li>Go to wireless networks and create a new one.</li><li>Set the SSID name.</li><li>Set the level of security you require and set a security key (password).</li><li>Select the use VLAN checkbox and use the ID value that you set on your IoT network.</li><li>I left all of the other settings as their default.</li><li>Now using a device (e.g. a smartphone) connect to the new wireless network.</li><li>Check your local network IP address and ensure that it's in the range you specified above e.g. 192.168.1.2/24. You can also use the <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ubnt.usurvey&hl=en_GB" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Wifiman</a> app to check which devices you can see on your network.</li></ol>Make sure you've established that you can connect to the internet on the new network because the following steps will affect what the new IoT network can do.We are going to create 3 main rules which will prevent the IoT network from communicating with the main network, except to see the DNS server. The IoT network won't be restricted from accessing the public internet and the main network will have complete access to the IoT network.<ol><li>Open routing & firewall.</li><li>Click on firewall then create new rule.</li><li>Make sure that the rules are created on the LAN IN option. That is the local network going into Unifi's security gateway.</li></ol>Firstly we will create some groups which will act as containers for some of the IPs and ports we want to apply our rules to.Under Internet Security go to Firewall > Groups and create a new group, give it a meaningful name, e.g. LAN Group and add the following IPs:<ol><li>192.168.0.0/16</li><li>172.16.0.0/12</li><li>10.0.0.0/8</li></ol>Set the Type to IPv4 Address/Subnet. Save this group.Create another group which contains the IP address of the DNS server, and create another group for the port of the DNS server, which is port 53. You should have three groups:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/secure-iot-network/network-group.png" title="Network Groups" alt="Network Groups" />Next we'll create the firewall rules which will control traffic over the local network.The first rule will allow all local network traffic into the IoT network. Now we'll create the first rule. Go to Internet Security > Firewall. Click Create New Rule and use the following settings:<ol><li>Set the Type to LAN In.</li><li>Provide a meaningful description name, e.g ALLOW LAN to IoT.</li><li>Set the Action to Accept.</li><li>Set the IPv4 Protocol to ALL.</li><li>Under Source, set Source Type to Address/Port Group.</li><li>Set the IPv4 Address Group to ANY.</li><li>Set Port Group to ANY. </li><li>Under Destination set Destination Type to Address/Port Group.</li><li>Set the IPv4 Address Group to ANY.</li><li>Set Network Type to IPv4 Subnet. </li><li>Click Apply. Then that rule is complete.</li></ol>By selecting established and related this will ensure that no new connections can be made between the two networks. This prevents the IoT network from making any new connections to the LAN network and visa versa however the built in rule from Unifi on the LAN IN group will allow new connections between the two so we will need to create another rule to prevent those connections from the IoT network to the LAN network.The next rule will allow traffic from the IoT network to communicate with the DNS server. Like a mentioned earlier I used the PiHole DNS sink server.<ol><li>Set the Type to LAN In.</li><li>Provide a meaningful description name, e.g ALLOW IoT to DNS.</li><li>Set the Action to Accept.</li><li>Set the IPv4 Protocol to TCP and UDP.</li><li>Under Source, set Source Type to Network.</li><li>Set the Network to the IoT network IPs, e.g. IoT.</li><li>Set Network Type to IPv4 Subnet.</li><li>Under Destination set Destination Type to Address/Port Group.</li><li>Set the IPv4 Address Group to address group created for the DNS server, e.g. DNS Server.</li><li>Set the Port Group to port group created for the DNS port, e.g. DNS Port.</li><li>Click Apply. Then that rule is complete.</li></ol>The final rule will deny all traffic from the IoT network to the local network. Thus preventing the IoT devices from discovering or communicating with any of the devices on the local network.<ol><li>Set the Type to LAN In.</li><li>Provide a meaningful description name, e.g DROP IoT to LAN.</li><li>Set the Action to Drop.</li><li>Set the IPv4 Protocol to ALL.</li><li>Under Source, set Source Type to Network.</li><li>Set the Network to the IoT network IPs, e.g. IoT.</li><li>Set Network Type to IPv4 Subnet.</li><li>Under Destination set Destination Type to Address/Port Group.</li><li>Set the IPv4 Address Group to address group created for LAN, e.g. LAN Group.</li><li>Set the Port Group to ANY.</li><li>Click Apply. Then that rule is complete.</li></ol><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/secure-iot-network/firewall-rules.png" title="Firewall Rules" alt="Firewall Rules" />The above firewall rules should have been added in the LAN group.After all of the rules were in place I then restarted my USG. This removes all of the known states for all of the current connections and forces new ones to be established.

We are going to create 3 main rules which will prevent the IoT network from communicating with the main network, except to see the DNS server.

You'll also need to add some script tags on that same page which reference the react libraries & the script file that will contain all of the custom components created for the application

Introducing reactjs into existing ASP.NET core application

Azure functions are a great way to encapsulate core non sequential functionality that can be run in a background process.For my site I have a very simple architecture which I use for managing my blog posts, which looks as follows:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/az-func-posts/azure-function.png" title="Old Architecture" alt="Old Architecture" />The process can be summarised as:<ol><li>A request is made to a blog page (any blog page).</li><li>The site's cached is checked for blog posts. <ol><li>If none are found then a request is made to Azure storage.</li><li>The cache is then populated with the blog posts.</li></ol></li><li>A HTML response is returned to the user.</li></ol>I had been looking at using Azure functions and decided that I would use them to perform the step of restarting the application whenever a new post was uploaded.This gave me an excuse to use Azure functions and integrate it into my website's architecture.So I wrote the following <a href="https://github.com/Mackolicious/AzureFunctionBlogTrigger" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Azure function blob trigger</a> hosted on GitHub.This function works as follows:<ol><li>A blob trigger is attached to the Azure function.</li><li>When the container is changed an event is raised.</li><li>The event triggers the Azure function.</li><li>The Azure function restarts the Azure Web App.</li></ol>

Azure functions are a great way to encapsulate core non sequential functionality that can be run in a background process

Azure functions with blob trigger

I recently migrated from .NET Core 2.0 to .NET Core 3.0 and here's the steps I had to take.1. Upgrade all project references from 2.0 -> 3.0:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-diff-xml diff-highlight">&lt;Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk"&gt; 
	 &lt;PropertyGroup&gt; 
-		 &lt;TargetFramework&gt;netcoreapp2.0&lt;/TargetFramework&gt; 
+		 &lt;TargetFramework&gt;netcoreapp3.0&lt;/TargetFramework&gt; 
	 &lt;/PropertyGroup&gt; 
.
.
.</code></pre>2. Upgrade (if required) Newtonsoft.Json (json.net) to 12.0.2<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-diff diff-highlight">- &lt;PackageReference Include="Newtonsoft.Json" version="10.0.2" /&gt; 
+ &lt;PackageReference Include="Newtonsoft.Json" version="12.0.2" /&gt;</code></pre>3. Change all Partial methods to use PartialAsync with await<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-diff diff-highlight">- @@Html.Partial("~/Views/Shared/Partial/navigation.cshtml") 
+ @await Html.PartialAsync("~/Views/Shared/Partial/navigation.cshtml")</code></pre>4. I replaced the razor extension method in Startup.cs with the following csproj entry<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-diff diff-highlight">+ &lt;AddRazorSupportForMvc&gt;true&lt;/AddRazorSupportForMvc&gt;</code></pre>5. I replaced the .UseApplicationInsights method with .AddApplicationInsightsTelemetry in Program.cs<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-diff diff-highlight">+ .UseApplicationInsights() 
- .AddApplicationInsightsTelemetry()</code></pre>6. I made several changes in the Startup.cs file as certain types were no longer available<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-diff diff-highlight">- public Startup(IConfiguration configuration, IHostingEnvironment env) 
+ public Startup(IConfiguration configuration, IWebHostEnvironment env) 
{ 
}</code></pre><pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-diff diff-highlight">+ services.AddMvc().AddNewtonsoftJson();</code></pre><pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-diff-csharp diff-highlight">private void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) 
{ 
-	 app.UseMvc(routes =&gt; 
+	 app.UseEndpoints(endpoints =&gt; 
	{ 
		endpoints.MapControllerRoute( 
			name: "default", 
			pattern: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}"); 
	}); 
}</code></pre>7. Also for an extra slice. I added the following package into project to allow for bundling and minification on a dotnet build<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-xml">&lt;PackageReference Include="BuildBundlerMinifier" Version="3.2.435" /&gt;</code></pre>

I recently migrated from .NET Core 2.0 to .NET Core 3.0 and here's the steps I had to take. Upgrade all project references from 2.0 -> 3.0

Upgrading to .NET Core 3.0

Enforcing client authentication via NodeJs is simple quick & efficient.Below I will demonstrate how to setup a server running NodeJs that performs client certification authentication which will reject any requests not made with a valid certificate.Firstly, install <a href="https://nodejs.org/en/download/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">NodeJs</a>, then run:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash"> npm install</code></pre>This will install a basic packages file for use with the node applicationCreate an empty file called app.js - this will contain the code required for server authenticationCreate the following folder locations on the server ca/certs/client-auth/ and ca/crl/We need to acquire some internal packages, paste the following at the start of the app.js file<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-javascript"> var fs = require("fs"), 
 http = require("http"), 
 https = require("https"), 
 httpProxy = require("http-proxy"), 
 proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer();</code></pre>Next we need to retrieve a list of valid root certificates along with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_revocation_list" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">certificate revocation list</a>. The CRL will ensure that revoke certificates are handled appropriately<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-javascript"> var clientCertificates = []; 
 var revocationCertificateLists = []; 
 var clientcertAuths = fs.readdirSync("ca/certs/client-auth"); 
 var crls = fs.readdirSync("ca/crl"); 
 for (var index = 0; index &lt; clientcertAuths.length; index++) { 
 clientCertificates[index] = fs.readFileSync("ca/certs/client-auth/" + clientcertAuths[index]); 
 } 
 for (var index = 0; index &lt; crls.length; index++) {
 revocationCertificateLists[index] = fs.readFileSync("ca/crl/" + crls[index]); 
 }</code></pre>We need to set the several options for use on our server, these options will allow for certificate authentication and HTTPS<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-javascript"> var options = { 
 "pfx": fs.readFileSync("ca/certs/server.pfx"), 
 "ciphers": "ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!DSS", 
 "honorCipherOrder": true,
 "crl": revocationCertificateLists,
 "ca": clientCertificates,
 "requestCert": true,
 "rejectUnauthorized": true
 };</code></pre>The options used are defined on the <a href="https://nodejs.org/api/tls.html#tls_tls_createsecurecontext_options" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">NodeJs</a> websiteLastly we need to create the server and set the port that we want to use for HTTPS traffic<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-javascript"> https.createServer(options, (req, res) =&gt; {
 console.log("Hello HTTPS traffic ");
 }).listen(443);</code></pre>Now create your root certificate from which all client certificates will be created and store that file in ca/certs/client-auth and all certificate revocation files to be stored in ca/crl/

Below I will demonstrate how to setup a server running NodeJs that performs client certification authentication which will reject any requests not made with a valid certificate.

Client Authentication using NodeJs

Below shows a code example of how to covert a certificate to a Base64 string in order to create a point to site VPN for use with Azure.1. Create a certificateThe makecert command is only available in the Visual Studio command prompt. This location varies depending on the version of Visual Studio, for VS 2017 community the location is here 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat'<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash"> cd D:\test 
 makecert -n "CN=RootCertificate" -r -a sha256 -sv RootCertificate.pvk "RootCertificate.cer"</code></pre>The private key RootCertificate.pvk can be removed from the above, however it is useful when creating client certificates from this root.If you have left the private key in you should see the following:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/privateKey.png" title="Private Key Password" alt="Private Key Password" />Click none for the basis of this test2. Convert the certificate to a Base64 stringThe rest of these steps require powershell<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-powershell"> function Create-Base64Certificate { 
 $CertificatePath = "D:\test\RootCertificate.cer" 
 $certificate = new-object System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2($CertificatePath) 
 $certificateBase64 = [system.convert]::ToBase64String($certificate.RawData) 
 $certificateBase64 &gt;&gt; out.txt 
 } 
 Create-Base64Certificate</code></pre>3. Review contents of out.txtYou should see something similar<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash">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</code></pre>This Base64 string can be used when creating and uploading a root certificate to an Azure VPN.4. Try it in an Azure Template<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-json">{
 "apiVersion": "2015-06-15",
 "type": "Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworkGateways",
 "name": "api-gateway-test",
 "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
 "dependsOn": [
 "[concat("Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses/", parameters("gatewayPublicIPName"))]",
 "[concat("Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/", variables("virtualNetworkName"))]"
 ],
 "properties": {
 "ipConfigurations": [
 {
 "properties": {
 "privateIPAllocationMethod": "Dynamic",
 "subnet": {
 "id": "[variables("gatewaySubnetRef")]"
 },
 "publicIPAddress": {
 "id": "[resourceId("Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses",parameters("gatewayPublicIPName"))]"
 }
 },
 "name": "vnetGatewayConfig"
 }
 ],
 "sku": {
 "name": "Basic",
 "tier": "Basic"
 },
 "gatewayType": "Vpn",
 "vpnType": "RouteBased",
 "enableBgp": "false",
 "vpnClientConfiguration": {
 "vpnClientAddressPool": {
 "addressPrefixes": [
 "192.168.1.0/26"
 ]
 },
 "vpnClientRootCertificates": [
 {
 "name": "TestRootCert",
 "properties": {
 "PublicCertData": "[parameters("certificateBase64String")]"
 }
 }
 ]
 }
 }
}</code></pre>

Below shows a code example of how to covert a certificate to a Base64 string in order to create a point to site VPN for use with Azure.

Root Certificate Configuration for Azure VPN

What does a company do when a security incident happens? How do they react? What is the process that they follow to resolve the issue and ensure that it doesn't happen again?I will start to outline a process that I have adopted that I follow to help identify, resolve and document a security incident.The process is known DEIDRE and is an acronym which stands for:<ul class="list-unstyled"><li>Discovery</li><li>Escalation</li><li>Investigation</li><li>Documentation</li><li>Remediation</li><li>Education</li></ul><h3>1. Discovery</h3>This is the initial phase of identifying the incident. Was the incident discovered by a third party, was it discovered by a customer, or was it discovered by an internal engineer doing some routine tests?<h3>2. Escalation</h3>Immediately after the incident has been discovered it needs to be escalated to senior management ASAP. This should be done for any incident small or large so that management can carefully assess whether it is an issue worth addressing and triage it accordingly.<h3>3. Investigation</h3>While the escalation is happening the team responsible for working around the incident need to understand what is the new attack surface. Was this incident already known to us and considered a low priority? If this is a brand new issue how long potentially has this issue been available? Hoe many clients will be affected by this issue?<h3>4. Documentation</h3>When people think of documentation they usually think of long white papers, in this case documentation refers to the process of documenting the incident and the work require to fix the incident. The reason being that there needs to be an audit trail of the incident.<h3>5. Remediation</h3>This is process of deploying a fix, the reason that the fix comes so late in the process is because you need to ensure that your audit documented exactly how the issue occurred along with the solution. Any quick changes could affect future analysis and thus affect reporting of the issue to your stakeholders and clients.<h3>6. Education</h3>This process involves defining the resolution and answering all questions that occur during a security incident, i.e. How? Why? When? and most importantly what mitigations have been taken to ensure that this does not occur again. The answer to these questions should be categorised, documented and shared across the teams including management, stakeholders, and clients. By doing this you can reassure all those involved that this will not happen again.

What does a company do when a security incident happens? How do they react? What is the process that they follow to resolve the issue and ensure that it doesn't happen again?

DEIDRE - The process of addressing security incidents

A VPN stands for virtual private network. It's purpose is to create a connection between your computer and another network securely, e.g. connecting to a work network.The main use of a VPN has been for employees to connect to their work network, this allows them to access specific work data, such as Outlook Exchange, or local intranet sites.However lately people have been using VPNs for extra security. Using a VPN provides the following benefits: <ol><li>An encrypted connection is made between your computer and the network hence the data cannot be seen.</li><li>Your computer's IP address is changed by the server hence regional locked data can be accessed.</li></ol><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/vpn.png" title="A typical VPN setup" alt="A typical VPN setup" />

A VPN stands for virtual private network. It's purpose is to create a connection between your computer and another network securely, e.g. connecting to a work network.

What is a VPN?

This article will demonstrate how to force client certificate authentication using Internet Information Services 10. (This may be applicable to other versions of IIS.)<ul class="list-unstyled"><li>1. Open IIS</li><li>2. Expand the server node</li><li>3. Right click on Sites</li><li>4. Then click Add Website...</li></ul><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/addwebsite.png" title="Add Website" alt="Add Website" />You can use the following options: <ul class="list-unstyled"><li>1. Site name: SecureSite</li><li>2. Physical Path: C:\inetpub\wwwroot</li><li>3. Binding (Type): https</li><li>4. Binding (IP address): All Unassigned</li><li>5. Binding (Port): 443</li><li>6. SSL Certificate: *CHOOSE ANY CERTIFICATE</li></ul><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/addwebsitedialog.png" title="Add Website Dialog" alt="Add Website Dialog" />Once you've completed click OKClick on the newly created site on the left hand side panel to bring up the features view on the right. On the features view on double click SSL Settings<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/sslselection.png" title="SSL Selection" alt="SSL Selection" />Once you have opened the SSL Settings view select the following options: <ul class="list-unstyled"><li>1. RequireSSL</li><li>2. Client Certificates: Require</li></ul><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/ssloptions.png" title="SSL Options" alt="SSL Options" />Then click Apply on the far right of the features view to save your changes.Navigate to that the site to test whether the SSL Settings were applied correctly. Right click on the site in the left hand panel, go to Manage Website then browse<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/browsecontext.png" title="Browse Context Menu" alt="Browse Context Menu" />You should see a certificate error page, this is because we used a random certificate. Just accept the error and move on.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/sslerror.png" title="Browse SSL Error" alt="Browse SSL Error" />Once you accept the error navigate to the site https://localhost and you should see the following error: 403.7<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/forbidden.png" title="Forbidden Error" alt="Forbidden Error" />Now we will perform client authentication by creating a certificate and installing it on the server.In order to create a certificate run the following command in <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/mt173057.aspx" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Microsoft Powershell</a>, make sure you run powershell as an admin.<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-powershell">New-SelfSignedCertificate -DnsName "www.test.co.uk", "test.co.uk" -CertStoreLocation "cert:\LocalMachine\My"</code></pre><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/powershell-command.png" title="New Certificate Command" alt="New Certificate Command" />This command will create a self-signed certificate and store it in the computer's personal storeNow we need to move the certificate from the computer's personal store into the trusted store. This can be done by a simple drag and dropYou will need to have admin privileges for the next step, open the Windows run dialog using WindowsKey + R and type MMC and press enter<ul class="list-unstyled"><li>1. Open Certificates (Local Computer) | Personal | Certificates</li><li>2. Grab the www.test.co.uk certificate and drag it into Trusted Root Certification Authorities | Certificates</li></ul><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/run-mmc.png" title="Windows Run Dialog" alt="Windows Run Dialog" />Now drag the certificate into the trusted store<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/cert-drag.png" title="Certificate Dragging" alt="Certificate Dragging" />Open the Trusted Root Certification Authorities | Certificates store and find the www.test.co.uk certificateRight click on that certificate and select All Tasks | Export. Make sure you export the private key, follow the wizard and save the certificate to your desktopDouble click the certificate to begin the installation wizard. Make sure that the Current User store is selected, apart from that follow the default steps until the process is completeGo back to your browser and type https://localhost you should see the following:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/cert-selection.png" title="Certificate Selection" alt="Certificate Selection" />Hopefully everything should be working and you should be able to select client certificate

This article will demonstrate how to force client certificate authentication using Internet Information Services 10. (This may be applicable to other versions of IIS.)

Client Certificate Authentication in IIS

It's that time again. Now that Apple have released their truly wireless earbuds its time for a comparison of the what the market is currently offering.Below is a table summarising the different features offered by the wireless earbuds.I decided that this was not worth the money so rather than pay for more storage I downloaded all of my photos. Google Takeout is a service that allows you to download all of your data that is stored by Google. If your data is quite large, (like mine) you will have to use several downloads in order to retrieve all the data, also the download links have an expiration date on them, so don't waste time!<div class="table-responsive-sm table-responsive-md"><table class="table table-striped"><thead class="thead-dark"><tr><th>Category</th><th>Apple AirPods</th><th>Samsung Gear IconX</th><th>Bragi Dash</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th scope="row">Price</th><td>$159.00*</td><td>£169.00*</td><td>€299.00*</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Battery</th><td>Earbuds: ?mAh Case: ?mAh</td><td>Earbuds: 47mAh Case: 315mAh</td><td>Earbuds: 100mAh Case: 2200mAh</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Storage</th><td>0GB</td><td>4GB</td><td>4GB</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">IP Rating</th><td>-</td><td>P2i Nano Coating</td><td>IP55, waterproof to 1m</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Connectivity</th><td>Bluetooth 4.0</td><td>Bluetooth 4.1</td><td>Bluetooth 4.0</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Sensors</th><td>Accelerometer</td><td>Hate Rate / Accelerometer / Capacitive Touch</td><td>Optical Touch / Accelerometer / Magnetometer / Gyroscope / Oximeter</td></tr></tbody></table></div>*Prices correct at 09 September 2016

It's that time again. Now that Apple have released their truly wireless earbuds its time for a comparison of the what the market is currently offering.

AirPods vs IconX vs Dash

Creating a NotFound / 404 rule within ASP.NET Core is quite simple, and once you've created that you'll be able to create custom error pages for all error status codes.<ul class="list-unstyled"><li>1. Update the Startup.cs Located at the root of any ASP.NET Core application is the Startup.cs file containing all the necessary bootstrap code.</li><li>2. Update the Configure method with the following:</li></ul><pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-csharp"> public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)  { 
 ... 
 if (env.IsDevelopment())  { 
 app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); 
 app.UseBrowserLink(); 
 } 
 else  { 
 //redirects all errors given their error code 
 app.UseStatusCodePagesWithReExecute("/error/{0}"); 
 app.UseApplicationInsightsExceptionTelemetry(); 
 } 
 ... 
 }</code></pre>The above code will now redirect all errors, e.g. a 404 not found error will get redirected to /error/404. Now we need to setup the routes and controllers to handle these requests.<ul class="list-unstyled"><li>3. Update the routing rules</li></ul>We now need a routing rule to handle all the potential error redirects.Update the routing rules with the following:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-csharp"> ... 
 //This routes specifically handles 404 not found requests 
 routes.MapRoute( 
 name: "Error-404-Route", 
 template: "error/404", 
 defaults: new { controller = "Error", action = "NotFound" } 
 ); 

 routes.MapRoute( 
 name: "Error-StatusCode-Route", 
 template: "error/{statusCode}", 
 defaults: new { controller = "Error", action = "InternalServerError" } 
 ); 
 
 ...</code></pre><ul class="list-unstyled"><li>4. Create an error controller</li></ul>Create an error controller in a new file ErrorController.cs with the following code, making sure you take any areas into account if applicable<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-csharp"> using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc; 
 namespace Test.Controllers 
 { 
 public class ErrorController : Controller 
 { 
 public IActionResult InternalServerError(int statusCode) 
 { 
 ... 
 return View("~/Views/Error/500.cshtml"); 
 } 

 public IActionResult NotFound() 
 { 
 ... 
 return View("~/Views/Error/404.cshtml"); 
 }
 } 
 }</code></pre><ul class="list-unstyled"><li>5. Create the associated views</li></ul>Now we need to create error views for the associated errors, i.e. ~/Views/Error/404.cshtml<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-html">&lt;div&gt;404 Not Found&lt;div/&gt;</code></pre>

Creating a NotFound / 404 rule within ASP.NET Core is quite simple, and once you've created that you'll be able to create custom error pages for all error status codes.

Creating a 404 Rule within ASP.NET CORE MVC

I am going to outline (as briefly as possible) how to ensure a <a href="https://nodejs.org/en/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Node Application</a> is restarted effectively if an uncaught exception is thrown, whether that exception is synchronous or asynchronous.You will need to have the following <a href="https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/what-is-npm" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">NPM Packages</a> installed. <a href="https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/what-is-npm" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">NPM Packages</a>ListOnce <a href="https://nodejs.org/en/download/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">NodeJs</a> is installed, you will need to <a href="http://expressjs.com/en/starter/installing.html" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">install the Express webserver</a> Below is a screenshot of my app.js file which I created following the <a href="http://expressjs.com/en/starter/hello-world.html" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Express setup tutorial:</a><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/express-appjs-file.png" title="Express App" alt="Express App" />You will need to add global error handling logic for any synchronous request. This is done by the app.use method which acts as a handler. This method will need to be placed at the bottom of all requests.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/express-appjs-file-with-sync-error.png" title="Sync Error" alt="Sync Error" />Because of the Node's design it is not possible to catch an unhandled exception on an asynchronous callback. It is only possible if the API is coded in a way which allows for it, which may not always be the case when using a custom in house package.You will need to register for the 'uncaughtexception' event and process unhandled exceptions.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/express-appjs-file-with-global-error.png" title="Global Error" alt="Global Error" />The above logic now captures all errors sync or async, however the application will still terminate due to the <pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash">process.exit(1);</code></pre> line. Now we need to use Forever. Forever is an npm package which will restart our node application once it crashes. Install the forever package <pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash">npm install forever -g</code></pre> and use the follow basic configuration file.Save this file at the root of your application and call it forever.json<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/forever-configuration.png" title="Forever Configuration" alt="Forever Configuration" />At the terminal run <pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash">forever start ./forever.json</code></pre>This will start the background process for your node application, and it will ensure that your application restarts in the event of an unhandled exception.

I am going to outline (as briefly as possible) how to ensure a Node application is restarted effectively if an uncaught exception is thrown, whether that exception is synchronous or asynch

Ensuring Node Express Restarts

Two factor authentication is a two step process which is used by websites to login users. There are many forms of two factor authentication; but for this blog I will focus on the process that is used across most websites.The first step is the same as normal where you provide a username and password and then hit login. The second step is where things get interesting, rather than being logged into the website you are presented with a screen that requests your permission either by a time based code or a phone app request:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/outlook-2-factor-auth.jpg" title="Outlook 2 Factor Auth" alt="Outlook 2 Factor Auth" />Both require the use of a mobile phone that you own and always have to hand when logging into these websites.The second step works by identifying who you are by the fact that you have access to the phone that is associated with the login account. This provides some extra protection to your account because no longer can someone access your account just by knowing your login name and password. Using two factor authentication is a very clever and simple way to add some extra protection to your account.

Two factor authentication is a two step process which is used by websites to login users. There are many forms of two factor authentication, but for this blog I will focus on the process t

Two Factor Authentication

Ever though about updating your computer's hard disk?I've always contemplated about whether to get a solid state drive or by a new laptop. Finally I decided on both! The change in performance is incredible. I bought my new HDD from <a href="http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/ct240bx200ssd1/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Crucial</a> and my docking station from <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FDLCTQO?ref_=cm_sw_r_em_awd_O7GxwbAHWT243" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Amazon</a>. Two very simple and inexpensive devices which provide enough power for my daily needs.The docking station takes 2.5' and 3.5' hard disk drives (they can also be Solid State Drives) which can easily be attached and removed by pulling on the drive. Once you have connected the external drive to your computer via the USB port (try and use a USB 3.0 port), you can then use a device cloning software to copy all of your files from your current hard disk drive to the USB connected drive.Once the copying process is complete you can simply replace your current hard disk drive with your new drive enjoying the new speeds.

I've always contemplated about whether to get a solid state drive or by a new laptop. Finally I decided on both! The change in performance is incredible. I bought my new HDD from Crucial a

HDD Docking Station

Ever though about moving all of your photos or maybe all of data out of Google? <a href="https://www.google.com/takeout/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Google Takeout</a> is the answer to your problems.I recently discovered that all of my Google photos, gmail and drive have a <a href="https://www.google.com/settings/storage" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Storage Limit</a> - which when exceeded will result in me having to BUY more data.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/google-storage.png" title="Storage Quota" alt="Storage Quota" />I decided that this was not worth the money so rather than pay for more storage I downloaded all of my photos. Google Takeout is a service that allows you to download all of your data that is stored by Google. If your data is quite large, (like mine) you will have to use several downloads in order to retrieve all the data, also the download links have an expiration date on them, so don't waste time!

Ever though about moving all of your photos or maybe all of data out of Google? Google Takeout is the answer to your problems.

Using Google Takeout

One of my favourite extensions in Visual Studio 2012 for the price conscience is <a href="http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/3a96a4dc-ba9c-4589-92c5-640e07332afd" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Productivity Power Tools 2012</a>.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/productivity-power-tools-2012/power-tools.png" title="Visual Studio 2012 extensions window" alt="Visual Studio 2012 extensions window" />There are many features which come with Productivity Power Tools 2012 (aka free mini resharper), however one of my favourite features is the new solution wide Remove and Sort.Remove and Sort is a feature I use constantly on a per class level to remove unwanted using directives and sort them by System first.Now this can be achieved by right clicking on the solution and then selecting -> remove and sort<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/productivity-power-tools-2012/remove-and-sort.png" title="Remove and sort context menu" alt="Remove and sort context menu" />Another cool feature is the new Edit Project File as opposed to unload -> edit project file. Quite a minor feature but still worth a mention.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/productivity-power-tools-2012/edit-project-file.png" title="Edit project file context menu" alt="Edit project file context menu" />

There are many features which come with Productivity Power Tools 2012 (aka free mini resharper), however one of my favourite features is the new solution wide Remove and Sort.

Productivity Power Tools 2012

The key to this publish dilemma is Publish Profiles, Using these will change your life forever.<h3>Step 1. Creating a Publish Profile</h3>These can be created manually but the easiest way is to use the publish wizard in Visual Studio 2012.Right click on the project you want published and select publish.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/visual-studio-2012-deployment/publish-name.png" title="Visual Studio profile name in publish settings" alt="Visual Studio profile name in publish settings" />You will need to actually publish the project in order for the Publish Profile to be created (that sucks!). Once you've published whether it worked or not there should be a publish profile saved in the properties folder underneath the published project:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/visual-studio-2012-deployment/saved-profile.png" title="Visual Studio publish profiles" alt="Visual Studio publish profiles" />Check that in to your source control so that is can be available on the build server.<h3>Step 2. Automating the deployment</h3>Ok, so now you have to prepare the command line arguments to run against msbuild. The following should be sufficient:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash">msbuild.exe
/p:publishUrl=LOCATION_OF_WHERE_YOU_WANT_YOUR_STUFF_DEPLOYED
/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=NAME_OF_PUBLISH_PROFILE.pubxml
/p:Configuration=Release 
//the configuration property can be a custom configuration in order to apply web.config transformations</code></pre>The publish profile can be created manually if you are using Visual Studio 2010; as long as the publish profile file is saved in the correct location all should be good. I have tested this against web applications that publish vis FTP and it works fine!.<h3>References</h3><ul class="list-unstyled"><li><a href="http://sedodream.com/2010/04/26/ConfigTransformationsOutsideOfWebAppBuilds.aspx" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">http://sedodream.com/2010/04/26/ConfigTransformationsOutsideOfWebAppBuilds.aspx</a></li><li><a href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TinyHappyFeatures3PublishingImprovementsChainedConfigTransformsAndDeployingASPNETAppsFromTheCommandLine.aspx" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TinyHappyFeatures3PublishingImprovementsChainedConfig...</a></li><li><a href="http://sedodream.com/2012/10/27/MSBuildHowToSetTheConfigurationProperty.aspx" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">hhttp://sedodream.com/2012/10/27/MSBuildHowToSetTheConfigurationProperty.aspx</a></li><li><a href="http://sedodream.com/2012/08/19/VisualStudioProjectCompatabilityAndVisualStudioVersion.aspx" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">http://sedodream.com/2012/08/19/VisualStudioProjectCompatabilityAndVisualStudioVersion.aspx</a></li><li><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13920146/using-msbuild-exe-to-publish-a-asp-net-mvc-4-project-with-the-cmd-line" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13920146/using-msbuild-exe-to-publish-a-asp-net-mvc-4-project-with-the-cmd-line</a></li><li><a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd465326(VS.100).aspx" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd465326(VS.100).aspx</a></li><li><a href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SlowCheetahWebconfigTransformationSyntaxNowGeneralizedForAnyXMLConfigurationFile.aspx" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SlowCheetahWebconfigTransformationSyntaxNowGeneralizedForAny...</a></li><li><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8366091/how-do-i-use-web-config-transform-on-my-connection-strings" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8366091/how-do-i-use-web-config-transform-on-my-connection-strings</a></li></ul>

The key to this publish dilemma is Publish Profiles, Using these will change your life forever. These can be created manually but the easiest way is to use the publish wizard in Visual Stu

Deploying with Visual Studio 2012 (and Visual Studio 2010)

JQuery has a lot of plugins and add-ons which allow you to achieve some powerful customisations.One such plugin is the <a href="http://jqueryui.com/datepicker/#localization" class="post__link post__link--base-colour"> JQuery localisation feature</a> which allows you to customise the datepicker depending on the local, i.e. the Country and/or Language.Firstly you need to include the modified JQuery datepicker javascript file with the following name: jquery.ui.datepicker-xx-XX.js, where 'xx-XX' represents the specific culture, e.g. jquery.ui.datepicker-pt-BR.js.Then inside that jquery.ui.datepicker-pt-BR.js file you need to insert your culture specific translations, Brazilian Portuguese is below:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-javascript">jQuery(function ($) {
	$.datepicker.regional["pt-BR"] = {
	closeText: "Fechar",
	prevText: "Anter",
	nextText: "Próx",
	currentText: "Hoje",
	monthNames: ["Janeiro", "Fevereiro", "Março", "Abril", "Maio", "Junho",
	"Julho", "Agosto", "Setembro", "Outubro", "Novembro", "Dezembro"],
	monthNamesShort: ["Jan", "Fev", "Mar", "Abr", "Mai", "Jun","Jul", "Ago", "Set", "Out", "Nov", "Dez"],
	dayNames: ["Domingo", "Segunda", "Terça", "Quarta", "Quinta", "Sexta", "Sábado"],
	dayNamesShort: ["Dom", "Seg", "Ter", "Qua", "Qui", "Sex", "Sáb"],
	dayNamesMin: ["D", "S", "T", "Q", "Q", "S", "S"],
	weekHeader: "Sem",
	dateFormat: "dd/mm/yy",
	firstDay: 0,
	isRTL: false,
	showMonthAfterYear: false,
	yearSuffix: ""
	};
});</code></pre>And reference that file in your script tags:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-javascript">&lt;script src="/Scripts/jquery.ui.datepicker-pt-BR.js" &gt;&lt;/script&gt;</code></pre>Use the following code to attach the localised datepicker to a text box.<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-javascript">&lt;script&gt;
$(function () {
	var culture = "pt-BR";
	$.datepicker.setDefaults( $.datepicker.regional[ culture ] );
	$("#DateOfBirth").datepicker({
		dateFormat: "dd/mm/yy",
		yearRange: "1920:2013",
		maxDate: "+0M +0D",
		changeMonth: true,
		changeYear: true
	});
});
&lt;/script&gt;</code></pre>

JQuery has a lot of plugins and add-ons which allow you to achieve some powerful customisations 

JQuery Brazilian Portuguese DatePicker

OAuth 2.0 is a protocol (set of rules) which allows you to access a user's personal information without having to know their user credentials, i.e. username or password.This is quite significant considering all of the issues surrounding security with user authentication, e.g. SSL, certificates, storage encryption etc.What this means is you could access a person's Gmail account given just their permission.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/working-with-oauth-2/oauth2-playground.png" title="OAuth 2.0 Playground" alt="OAuth 2.0 Playground" />Screen shot taken from <a href="https://developers.google.com/oauthplayground/" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">OAuth playground</a>How it works?There are various processes involved in the OAuth 2.0 protocol, but the most common is the <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6749#section-4.1" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Authorisation Code Grant Flow</a>.The <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6749#section-4.1" class="post__link post__link--base-colour">Authorisation Code Grant Flow</a> allows a program to gain access to a user's personal information by access of a authorisation token.The process works as follows:<ol><li>The program/application requests an authorisation token from their chosen provider along with what they want to access, e.g. the program might say, 'can i please have an authorisation token Google for Billy's Gmail account?'</li><li>Billy then has to approved that request by simply saying 'yes' or 'no'.</li><li>Assuming Billy said 'yes' then the program/application is issued with an authorisation token from the provider (Google).</li><li>The program/application can then exchange this for an access token which is actually what is needed to access Billy's Gmail account. With that token the program/application can then read Billy's Gmail account.</li></ol>The access token expires about every hour so the program/application will need to make sure that they request a new one!

OAuth 2.0 is a protocol (set of rules) which allows you to access a user's personal information without having to know their user credentials, i.e. username or password

Working with OAuth 2.0

I'm up and running now with Team Foundation <s>Server</s> Service, and I can say that I'm quite impressed. http://tfs.visualstudio.com/en-us/ I've set up a continuous integration environment at https://mackolicious.visualstudio.com/ Where I've already added two projects.<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/working-with-tfs/tfs-home.png" title="Team Foundation Service home page" alt="Team Foundation Service home page" />There's a lot of basic functionality such as, backlog/user story generation, typical agile 'swim lanes' (to-do, in-progress, done), burndown, code/check-in history etc. My overview (dashboard) looks like this:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/working-with-tfs/tfs-dashboard.png" title="Team Foundation Service dashboard" alt="Team Foundation Service dashboard" />As you can see by adding in the capacity of the team and the sprint's dates, TFS is able to calculate burndown metrics, cool! I'm still playing around with the piece of kit! I've already added an application using Eclipse and one using Visual Studio and so far so good.

I'm up and running now with Team Foundation Service, and I can say that I'm quite impressed. http://tfs.visualstudio.com/en-us/ I've set up a continuous integration environment at https://

Working with Team Foundation Service

In my experience as a developer I have observed various release processes that are used to get code to production.In my opinion the most effective and efficient release process within an Agile environment is one that is automated and is controlled by either a QA (Quality Assurance) Tester or a PO (Product Owner). Both these individuals have a strong understand of the acceptance criteria and customer requirements, hence they would be best suited to deploy a piece of code to production.I believe the entire process should be automated including rollbacks and configuration changes and should be as seamless as just clicking a button.The steps should be as follows:<ol><li>Developer finishes work and deploys to a test environment.</li><li>QA signs off work according to COA (conditions of acceptance) and deploys to an intermediate environment, e.g. hidden live, stage (whatever)</li><li>The QA and PO then review the work again on the intermediate environment and deploy directly to production</li></ol>That entire process could take less than an hour! Meaning work developed at the start of the day could be in production by the end &#9786

In my experience as a developer I have observed various release processes that are used to get code to production

Release management and release process

Have you ever seen a error like the one below:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-bash">System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly "Missing.Assembly.dll, Version=1.0.20.15800, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.</code></pre>The first thing to think is Ahhhhhhh! I have all the references what is going on??! Don't panic here's a few steps to diagnosing this issue, and hopefully resolving it.<ol><li>Make sure you can debug the code and ascertain which assembly is throwing the exception.</li><li>Once you know which assembly is complaining about the missing DLL you then need to find the corresponding project and check that project's references:</li></ol><img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/file-not-found-exception/solution-explorer.png" title="Visual Studio solution explorer" alt="Visual Studio solution explorer" />If the reference exists then you need to look a little deeper, into the second part of the exception or one of its dependencies. This is key, what this means is that Missing.Assembly.dll is referencing an assembly you're not (FACT).What you need to do is ascertain exactly which assembly it is referencing and which version it is referencing. This is actually quite tricky for large projects but the easiest way to find out is by looking at where the exception occured (i.e. the line of code) and what that particular piece of code needs to work in terms of references. Do this by looking at the using statements:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/file-not-found-exception/namespace.png" title="C# namespace declaration" alt="C# namespace declaration" />Good luck &#9786 Any questions?

Have you ever seen a error like the one below: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Missing.Assembly.dll, Version=1.0.20.15800, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken

File not found exception

Bonjour Amigos, Just upgraded to Windows 8 Pro on the following machine: (Just look at the spec).<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/windows-8-upgrade/nostart.png" title="No start icon in taskbar" alt="No start icon in taskbar" />It was a very seamless and easy installing, however my version of Kaspersky had to be un-installed as it was not compatible with Windows 8, apart from that everything else worked fine. At first it was difficult to use as navigating around the desktop (app) without a start icon is confusing...<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/windows-8-upgrade/searchresults.png" title="Windows search results" alt="Windows search results" />Whenever you press the start key you are redirected to the new Windows start screen! It can be quite confusing at first but intuitive minds can get used to it quickly. For example, if you wanted to search for an application or file, you carry out the same action you would on Windows 7 START + 'app name', however it looks completely different:<img class="img-responsive post__image" src="https://mdn.blob.core.windows.net/img/blog/windows-8-upgrade/windows8spec.png" title="Windows 8 specifications" alt="Windows 8 specifications" />This concludes my analysis for upgrading to Windows 8, just to summarise I would recommend upgrading!

Bonjour Amigos, Just upgraded to Windows 8 Pro on the following machine: (Just look at the spec)

Upgrading to Windows 8

Using ADO.NET is a great way to connect to data provider that exists outside the .NET framework to connect to a database. There are many data providers out there, MySQL,PostgreSQL, FlySpeed etc. which are in commercial use but are not necessarily that popular.It can be difficult sometimes create a DAL for a custom database architecture. Fortunately we have ADO.NET along with DbProviderFactory class which allows any custom DB provider to connect to the .NET CLR and allow developers to write custom execution queries against the database.When using these custom DB providers you need to update your application configuration file so that the .NET runtime has knowledge of the DbProviderFactory that you intend on using, if you check your machine.config (C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Config) for .NET v4.0 you'll should see the following entries:<pre class="code-block"><code class=" language-xml">&lt;section name="system.data" type="System.Data.Common.DbProviderFactoriesConfigurationHandler, System.Data, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" /&gt;
	&lt;DbProviderFactories&gt;
		&lt;add name="Microsoft SQL Server Compact Data Provider" invariant="System.Data.SqlServerCe.3.5" description=".NET Framework Data Provider for Microsoft SQL Server Compact" type="System.Data.SqlServerCe.SqlCeProviderFactory, System.Data.SqlServerCe, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91" /&gt;
		&lt;add name="Microsoft SQL Server Compact Data Provider 4.0" invariant="System.Data.SqlServerCe.4.0" description=".NET Framework Data Provider for Microsoft SQL Server Compact" type="System.Data.SqlServerCe.SqlCeProviderFactory, System.Data.SqlServerCe, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91" /&gt; 
		&lt;add name="MySQL Data Provider" invariant="MySql.Data.MySqlClient" description=".Net Framework Data Provider for MySQL" type="MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlClientFactory, MySql.Data, Version=6.3.6.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" /&gt; 
	&lt;/DbProviderFactories&gt; </code></pre>These are the default factories that cone with the .NET framework, however if you want to introduce your own custom factory you can just add an entry. Depending on whether you want your factory to be available across applications or not you could add the entry to your local application/web configuration file.

Using ADO.NET is a great way to connect to data provider that exists outside the .NET framework to connect to a database. There are many data providers out there, MySQL,PostgreSQL, FlySpee

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