Articles tagged csharp
Secure Your .NET 6 Web API
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. .NET 6 is here and many of us are making preparations to update .NET 5 codebases to .NET 6. As part of this review,...
Managing Multiple .NET Microservices with API Federation
For large enterprise companies, boundaries around each team are crucial for maintaining systems that are owned by software engineers. This is accomplished by allowing individual teams to own their systems and expose them via APIs. You also need to keep certain types of cross-cutting concerns centralized, like select security controls, logging, and routing. If you don’t, every API across different teams has to implement common controls like rate-limiting, logging, and authentication. This can lead to...
Comparison of Dependency Injection in .NET
Why you should care about dependency injection Dependency injection is a tried and proven design pattern for producing code that is testable, readable, and reusable. This is achieved by creating (or increasing) a separation of concerns, where each class has a dedicated area of responsibility. Dependency injection is just one design pattern used to achieve inversion of control in which the calling code, or client, has no knowledge of the inner workings of the dependency,...
How to Deploy a .NET Container with AWS ECS Fargate
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. In a previous article, we learned how to host a serverless .NET application using AWS Lambda. We talked about the history of serverless and...
Using Azure Cognitive Services in a .NET App
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Azure Cognitive Services is a collection of cloud-based AI products from Microsoft Azure to add cognitive intelligence into your applications quickly. With Azure Cognitive...
Secure Your .NET 5 Blazor Server App with MFA
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Introduction to Server Blazor apps Blazor is an exciting new technology from Microsoft that will allow developers to bring C# to clients. Server and...
How to Write Cleaner, Safer Code with SonarQube, Docker and .NET Core
When it comes to code quality and code security, SonarQube is your teammate! This analysis tool is pretty straightforward to use, especially with some help from Docker. In this post, I’ll show you how to run a Docker container with SonarQube to analyze the code of a simple ASP.NET Core 3.0 application. Code analysis is a critical component of app development because it can identify security issues and other tricky bugs that might be overlooked...
Web Forms Migration to Blazor in .NET Core
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. ASP.NET Web Forms framework has been the cornerstone technology of .Net for web development since the release of .Net Framework in 2002. ASP.NET Web...
How to Toggle Functionality in C# with Feature Flags
Toggling functionality using feature flags in .NET Core apps is quite straightforward, especially with a neat little feature flag management service. In this post, I’ll walk you through how to build a simple web application using Okta for user authentication and how to use ConfigCat to manage and access feature flags. What Are Feature Flags? Feature flags (aka. feature toggles) are a relatively new software development technique that enables development teams to turn features on...
Easy Xamarin Forms Auth with PKCE
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. OAuth 2.0 is a protocol that controls authorization to access a secured resource such as a native app, web app, or API server. For...
A Quick Guide to Elasticsearch for .NET
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Implementing search functionality in your .NET Core apps doesn’t have to be hard! Using Elasticsearch makes it easy to develop fast, searchable apps. In...
Update App Secrets with Jenkins CI and .NET Core
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Introduction Jenkins is a free and open-source application that makes it easy to create CI/CD pipelines in almost any language or environment. Jenkins features...
Developer's Cheat Sheet for C# 9.0
Introduction to C# 9 (and a bit of C# 8, too) Let’s start with a background on how C# 9 got here (implementation examples start in the next section). The last few years in computer science, we’ve observed the rising popularity of the #FreeLunchOver concept. The idea is that CPU technology, based on electrical signals and Von Neumann architecture, has reached its intrinsic limits. As long as integrated circuits were slower than light, we knew...
How to Write Secure SQL Common Table Expressions
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Common table expressions are a powerful feature of Microsoft SQL Server. They allow you to store a temporary result and execute a statement afterward...
How to Use WebAuthn in C#
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Nowadays, using a password for authentication is becoming less and less secure. Password attacks are becoming more sophisticated, and data breaches occur more frequently....
How to Support .NET Core SameSite + OAuth Apps on Linux
Google’s recent approach to SameSite cookie attributes caused a bit of confusion among developers. Especially in cases where handling redirects is necessary. After doing some research in the topic I’d like this article to be a guide on how to handle SameSite cookie attributes properly in production. This guide can serve as the basis for deploying an application to any Linux based environment—such as AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Google Cloud App Engine—or any VPS Linux deployment....
How to Deploy Your .NET Core App to Google Cloud, AWS or Azure
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. There has been a cut-throat competition between cloud hosts in the past few years - each attempting to earn the sympathy of developers and...
Rider for C# - The Best Visual Studio Alternative IDE
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. When it comes to developing .NET apps, Visual Studio has historically been the default choice for .NET developers for two main reasons: Visual Studio...
Install .NET Core Apps on Linux in 5 Minutes
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. As a big fan of open source, I’m loving the fact that .NET Core is cross-platform. It opens up endless possibilities, from hobby projects,...
How to Authenticate with SAML in ASP.NET Core and C#
Security Assertion Markup Language, more commonly known as SAML, is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties. Most commonly these parties are an Identity Provider and a Service Provider. The primary use case for SAML has typically been to provide single sign-on (SSO) for users to applications within an enterprise/workforce environment. Up until the past few years, SAML was considered the industry standard—and proven workhorse—for passing an authenticated user into applications...
Deploy a .NET Container with Azure DevOps
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. When I began programming (in the ’80s), computers weren’t equipped with a network card by default. The internet was almost unknown and modems were...
How to Build Securely with Blazor WebAssembly (WASM)
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Last month I came out with a video tutorial on Blazor WebAssembly and I thought it would be good to follow up with a...
How to Adapt Your .NET App for SameSite
Have you run across an error message vaguely referencing SameSite in your .NET Apps? Read on, it’s time for a change to your code - and I’ll explain why. I like cookies, both the custard stuffed and the dry ones (which I use to dunk in my coffee or tea). This post is very much about cookies - only not the delicious, culinary ones. As in many other cases (think of the web, for example),...
How to Secure PII with Entity Framework Core
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. When the products we develop collect sensitive data, it’s essential to secure and safeguard it to protect user privacy and the user’s identity. Personally...
Welcome Nick Gamb
My name is Nick Gamb and I am excited to be joining the Okta Developer Advocacy team for the .NET community. Who Am I At heart, I am just an inquisitive nerd who has had a very fortunate career getting to do many different things. I love video games, computers, programming, hacking, security, DevOps, data, film, photography, sound design, editing -it’s a long list. For the brave and interested, the longer, but still condensed, version...
Super Simple GraphQL Tutorial with C#
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. In today’s connected world, APIs are becoming an essential part of software and hardware companies. APIs allow companies to expose their services to third-party...
Identity Security for Games in C# with Unity
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies. The engine is able to create three-dimensional, two-dimensional, virtual reality, and augmented reality games,...
Easy Xamarin Essentials with Web Authenticator
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Authentication is an important part of today’s mobile applications, but securely implementing authentication in a mobile app can be a daunting task. In this...
Deploy a .NET Container with AWS Fargate
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. In the last article I wrote, I showed you how to host a serverless .NET application using AWS Lambda. In the article, we talked...
How to Authenticate an AWS Lambda Function in C#
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Serverless was only first coined as a concept 8 years ago in 2012 by Ken Fromm in The future of the world is serverless....
How to Master the Filestream in C#
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. We live in a world that moves fast. Compared to the mid 90s through early 2000s, we have incredibly intelligent technology. Effectively, we have...
The Most Exciting Promise of .NET 5
It’s time to get jazzed about the future of the .NET ecosystem! It’s hard to believe that .NET only came out in 2002. There are so many versions of the framework, rapidly changing the places a C# developer could create and support. The entire ecosystem just turned 18, and it has been confusing at times with versioning. I fell in love with how powerful the platform was, but often, choosing to upgrade to the latest...
Build an Incredibly Fast Website with Dapper + C#
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. If you have been doing .NET development professionally for any length of time, you are probably familiar with Entity Framework for data access. At...
Baking in Security with .NET CLI Templates
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Let’s face it: developing good security is hard, unglamorous, and time-intensive. People tend to think about it as an afterthought instead of a priority....
How I Learned to Love Default Implementations in C# 8.0
If you haven’t heard, C# 8.0 ships with a new feature that allows you to add default implementations to interfaces. If you’re like me, you may be thinking, “Why? Why would I want to add implementations to interfaces? Isn’t that what abstract classes are for? Doesn’t that go against everything that interfaces stand for?” My immediate reaction to this new feature was visceral and negative,, but I decided to investigate closer and… I think I...
Use MongoDB in Your C# ASP.NET Apps
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. MongoDB is a document database. Instead of storing data in tables and rows, you store documents in a structure very similar to objects in...
C# WebSockets Tutorial: Build a Multiplayer Game
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. It might seem obvious, but HTTP is a transfer protocol for hypertext. It was designed — in 1989 — to allow clients to request...
Build a Simple Microservice with C# Azure Functions
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. I’ve always liked microservices because they embrace small, well-encapsulated building blocks. They mitigate deployment hell by treating each component of a software system as...
Build a Simple .NET Core App on Docker
Wouldn’t it be great if stuff just worked? Especially in the ever-changing world of software. Chasing dependency issues and debugging arcane operating system errors - not a good use of time. One important aspect of “stuff just works” – reliability. Recently, the software community has made strides in test-driven development and continuous integration processes to drive up quality, and of course, that improves reliability. But it can only go so far. Operating systems perform many...
5 Minute Serverless Functions in Azure without an IDE
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Microsoft Azure makes it incredibly easy to get a basic API/microservice up and running quickly! If you are unfamiliar with building serverless architecture in...
Secure an Episerver CMS website with Okta and C#
Most developers know that building an e-Commerce website can be a major pain. You have to contend with making the front end look great even when the content is dynamic and frequently updated. From seasonal themes like Black Friday and Christmas to customization based on the user’s behavior, it can be a major project to keep up. Luckily, there are platforms that allow developers to build in a templated fashion with content that can be...
Create a Blockchain Explorer in C#
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Blockchain technology is already central to major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and its applications are ever growing. A blockchain is simply a list of records,...
5 Reasons Why You Should Give Visual Studio for Mac Another Try
Visual Studio has not always been as user-friendly on the Mac as it is on a Windows machine. Lately, however, the stable release of VS for Mac is really starting to feel like a simple, but luxurious cousin to Visual Studio 2019. Different, but related. Installation on a Mac is quick, simple, and allows you to get into coding right away - whether you are already familiar or an Apple-only dev getting into something new...
Build Continuous Integration with Jenkins in C#
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. “It works on my machine.” If you’re a developer, or you work with developers, you’ve heard this phrase one too many times. If you’ve...
The Top 5 DevOps Automation Tools .NET Developers Should Know
Not too long ago, deployments were done by hand - manually pushed to a physical server somewhere in a building your company owned. The software engineering world has come a long way since then, and we have more options than ever get our code and data live, automatically. Here are a few tools every C#/.NET developer should know that can help with that process, vetted by some of the best software leaders in the business....
Decode JWTs in C# for Authorization
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. There are two main steps in securing an application: authentication and authorization. Authentication is easy enough. A user enters a username and password (maybe...
Alexa, Sign In Every Time: Voice-Only Authentication Verification in .NET
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. Authentication for voice, specifically Amazon’s Alexa, has its limitations. The initial Account Linking process Amazon provides for identification works for many scenarios, but it...
AWS Lambda vs Azure Functions for C# Serverless
As a C# developer, I became interested in how using a serverless function could complement existing projects I had done in ASP.NET 4.x. Enhancing ecosystems by using it for new requirements - without starting over from scratch - really had appeal. AWS Lambda came along first, with Azure Functions emerging onto the scene a couple of years later. In this post, we will briefly examine my experience getting started on both after using the .NET...
Use Firebase with Your ASP.NET MVC App
Working with databases hosted online has become easier over recent years. The emergence of Database as a Service (DaaS) specifically makes quick integrations much easier. It is important to keep application user data separate from personally identifiable information, especially in this day and age. When using a third party auth provider like Okta, user information like a name or email address can be stored by that provider directly in their system, benefitting from their oversight...
User Account Linking in Alexa with ASP.NET Web API
Note: In May 2025, the Okta Integrator Free Plan replaced Okta Developer Edition Accounts, and the Okta CLI was deprecated. We preserved this post for reference, but the instructions no longer work exactly as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation. REST APIs are often written for enterprise-level companies as a way of allowing a client-side application to access core business logic. For many companies,...