naresh1990

[naresh1990]

ConfigurationManager vs WebConfigurationManager vs CloudConfigurationManager

In my recent post, I have explained various ways of storing application settings and connection strings for the web application hosted in Azure App Service. Let’s now see what .NET Framework provides us to consume these settings from the code and when to use what?.

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[naresh1990]

Even though we have a great documentation for each of the azure offerings available, it is our job to study all of the options, compare and choose the one which best suits our application needs.

Configuring application settings for Azure Web App is one such topic where we have multiple options to maintain these settings. Let’s look at those options and see when to use what.

web.config

The first obvious place where you can configure all your application settings and  connection strings is web.config file which would be part of your application package.

we have been using this file to store all the settings which will impact our application behavior. Few examples of what we can store in this file would be like API or other external Uri’s, database connection strings,  secrets or keys,  connection strings for other azure/3rd party services and infact anything which should be able to configured at a later point of time without touching the application code.

But, it is not good for storing secrets, keys and connection strings of non-development environment in this file as it would be directly available for developer who is working on the application.

So, what is the other option we have to store these secrets without exposing them to all the members in the team?

Application Settings (in Azure Portal)

This works as a layer on top of web.config file in the application package. which means that any setting we configure in Application Settings blade of Azure Web App will override the existing setting present in web.config file (if any).

This way, all the actual secrets, keys and connection strings can be hidden from the team except those  who deal with Azure Provisioning and Releases.

So, we can store all common settings in web.config and store secrets, keys and connection strings within Azure Web App Application Settings as a best practice.

This is similar to how we maintain web.config transform files. App Settings in Azure Portal is like Release version of web.config.

web.config Transformations

Do we have any other options apart from this to store application secrets and keys?

Let’s think of a scenario where in you’re moving your application to production and you do not want any of the DevOps teams to know the production Keys, Secrets and Connection strings.

you got anything in mind?

Azure Key Vault

Yes, we have Azure Key Vault offering from Microsoft Azure to safeguard secrets, keys and connection strings of all the cloud applications and services.

With Azure Key Vault, you can store all the secrets and cryptographic keys in it and just expose them as a REST Uri to consume from the application without actually exposing the values stored in it.

Also, in order to use this service, you must register your application with Azure AD and provide the AD token to KeyVault every time you want to read a key value, which add an extra layer of security to your application secrets and keys.

This would be a recommended offering provided by azure for all the secrets and keys of production applications.

Hope you enjoyed reading this post and let me know if there are any other better ways to do this. I would be happy to learn.

Happy Coding!!!

  Find out the best way to configure settings for your Azure Web App Even though we have a great documentation for each of the azure offerings available, it is our job to study all of the options, compare and choose the one which best suits our application needs.

[naresh1990]

Extract a zip file stored as Azure Blob with this simple method

Extract a zip file stored as Azure Blob with this simple method #AzureStorage #ZipFiles

Ever got a scenario wherein you receive zip files into Azure Blob Storage and you are asked to implement a listener to process individual files from the zip file? If you’re already working on azure PaaS services, I don’t need to explain you how to implement a listener or a blob trigger using azure function app but what i wanted to focus in this post is to extract the zip file contents into an…

[naresh1990]

What have you got to replace AppFabric Cache?

What have you got to replace AppFabric Cache? #AppFabric #Cache #NCache

Mainstream Support for AppFabric 1.1. for windows server was came to an end on 4/11/2017. Are you still using the services with an extended support or looking for an alternative with Mainstream support?

Let’s dive into the topic and see what fits your application to replace AppFabric Caching Service. (more…)

[naresh1990]

Upload files to Azure Web App via FTP

Upload files to Azure Web App via FTP #AzureWebApp #PowerShell #FTP

Recently, I was spending some time on Stack overflow and found an interesting Question on our today’s headline topic. The Question is based on Official Azure Documentation on Uploading files to Azure Web App via FTP.

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[naresh1990]

Hey, I'm back with a new article on Attribute Routing introduced in ASP.NET MVC 5. In this article i have explained, How to enable Attribute Routing, and explored most of the Routing options available to play with it.

[naresh1990]

Have you moved to MVC? This article will explain the overview of MVC architecture and one of the most important part of MVC architecture i.e., URL Routing in detail. Come experience the fun with search engine friendly URL Routing mechanism in ASP.NET MVC.

[naresh1990]

Level: Beginner - It's a simple article which can guide you to download GridView data as an Excel document with the same styles as GridView designed for web page or with customized styles for Excel sheet. I have attached a sample working solution along with the article. Happy Coding! #ExportToExcel

[naresh1990]

Hey ASP.NET Developers, Here is the full article which guides you to send an Email from your application. it includes public SMTP details such as outlook, gmail etc to test this feature and also source code with working example is available for download. Give your feedback in the Site, if it helps you.

[naresh1990]

Are you sure that the sensitive data in your application is secured? if not, Go and Encrypt your data. This article explains what are all Encryptions methods available and how can each encryption algortithms performs. The namespaces and classes which can be used for Encryption are also explained in detail. You can even download the working example project from the download links available in this article. #Security

[naresh1990]

Hey Guys, If You're planning to take Microsoft Certifications in coming months, Join this Challenge. #MCP

[naresh1990]

Do you know how we can store complex .net objects data into a file? or how can we send .Net objects data over the network to another application? One of many ways is that we can serialize the complex data into XML. This articles explains how we can do it in detail. Also a working solution is available for download in this articles.