2023 on Funky Si's Test

Make API calls from Visual Studio

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 22:50:00 +0000

It is that exciting time of year where Microsoft announce a new version of .Net (Version 8 this time) and Visual Studio. There have been lots of announcements which I am still digesting, but one that caught my eye was a new window in Visual Studio that shows all your API endpoints.

The new window is called Endpoint Explorer and can be added from the menu View > Other Windows > Endpoint Explorer.

If you right click on one of the endpoints you can view the code or send a request. It works with minimal APIs or standard MVC APIs. If you select send a request a .http file will be created, this is a feature that has been in Visual Studio for a while but I haven’t taken much notice.

The syntax for writing these API calls is fairly simple

GET {{Catalog.API_HostAddress}}/api/v1/catalog/items

Or something more complex, this one is a POST with a body and a header. This is how you might call APIs which require authentication. Just include a header with your auth token.

POST {{Catalog.API_HostAddress}}/api/v1/catalog/items
Accept: application/json
{
"name": "Test",
"description": "Test",
"price": 1.99,
"pictureFileName": "test.png",
"pictureUri": "https://picsum.photos/200/300"
}

You can also set up various variables at the top of your .http files by prefixing with an @, by default you get one that defines your base URL, but you can add more.

eg @variable = value

Full docs of how you use .http files can be found here

A hyperlink above each API call in your .http file is labelled Send request. This initiates the API call and your window splits in half with the right hand side displaying the response.

The response has four tabs, a nicely json formatted response, a raw response, a headers tab and a request tab.

Now you will notice an env box underneath your file tabs, where the method dropdown is in a normal c# class file. It took me a while to figure out how to setup environments, but you can add a file that contain environment specific config, like base URL for test/prod/dev etc.

This blog post tells me about it here but the main thing is you need to add a json file called http-client.env.json and create some json like this:

 "local": {
"Api_HostAddress": "http://localhost:44338"
},
"dev": {
"Api_HostAddress": "https://dev.example.com"
},
"test": {
"Api_HostAddress": "https://test.example.com"
},
"prod": {
"Api_HostAddress": "https://prod.example.com"
}

Other environment specific variables can be added in the same way. Now you can easily call your API in different environments without having to change the URL each time.

But what about VS Code?

Well it turns out that VS Code has a similar feature, but it is not enabled by default. You need to install the REST Client extension. Once installed you can create a .http file and start making API calls. The syntax is very similar to Visual Studio.

VS Code has a similar concept of environments. Go to Extensions > REST Client > Extension Settings and click on Edit in settings.json. Add the same settings we used with VS to your settings.json file. You can now switch environments from the command palette “Rest Client: Switch Environment” and select the environment you want to use.

You can make use of the response of one API call in the request of another.

### 1st API Call
# @name login
POST {{Catalog.API_HostAddress}}/api/v1/identity/login
Content-Type: application/json
{
"user": "username",
"password": "password"
}
### 2nd API Call
GET {{Catalog.API_HostAddress}}/api/v1/catalog/items
Authorization: Bearer {{login.response.body.token}}
Content-Type: application/json

The last feature of VS Code I want to mention is that it can make GQL calls.

POST {{Catalog.API_HostAddress}}/graphql
X-REQUEST-TYPE: GraphQL
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer {{login.response.body.token}}
query ($name: String!, $owner: String!) {
repository(name: $name, owner: $owner) {
name
fullName: nameWithOwner
description
diskUsage
forkCount
stargazers(first: 5) {
totalCount
nodes {
login
name
}
}
watchers {
totalCount
}
}
}
{
"name": "vscode-restclient",
"owner": "Huachao"
}

Sorry postman but I think I have a new favourite tool for making API calls.

Be the best developer you can be

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 01:00:00 +0000

Recently I have been reading the first few chapters of Patrick Stewart’s Memoir, Making It So: A Memoir . In it he tells the story of his early life. I find it fascinating that very early on it is quite clear he had a life goal. Become the best actor Patrick Stewart can be.

Yes, there are other things in his life but this is what motivates much of what he does. At 12 he went on an 8 day residential drama course, where he met with like minded people that encourage him. So much that he continued to meet with them years after that course finished to grow his skills as an actor. This is something I would encourage everyone to do, find your tribe, find like minded people that will encourage you to grow and learn.

After school he couldn’t see a future in acting professionally so took a job at a newspaper. However when his job interfered with his acting in amateur dramatic groups, it caused him to reassess his priorities and he began saving to go to drama school. While at drama school he continued to improve and grow his acting skills. He has a singular vision in these early years to become an actor, and within a few weeks of finishing his training he had a job as an actor at a theatre. I have got up to the point where he is about to go on a world tour with a theatre group. During his first few jobs he continues to work on his acting skills. There is no doubt in my mind that this sense of continuous improvement helped mold Patrick Stewart into the actor we know today. While I am not a actor, I often think about continuous improvement, how can I be better at what I do.

A film I saw recently has a similar tale of a singular vision. A Million Miles Away tells the story of Jose Hernandez, a man that wanted to be an Astronaut and applied to NASA 12 times (he was rejected 11 times!) He started life as a migrant farm worker, (so similar to Patrick Stewart who also grew up in poverty). He did everything in his power to achieve his goals, and didn’t give up.

Jose Hernandez, when facing failure looked at those that had got into NASA. What did they have that he didn’t? He then worked on those areas to improve himself. He didn’t give up, he kept going. He works on his fitness, he got a pilots license, he learns Russian.

So what’s my point. Have a Big Goal. It can be anything but it needs to be big. My big goal of becoming a developer was achieved many years ago, and since then I have done a fair amount of drifting through life. What I need to do is be more like Patrick Stewart and continue to improve my skills, everyday make myself a better developer. What problems am I facing, lets break them down into manageable goals and get them solved so I can move on to the next lot.

DDD East Midlands

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On Saturday 7th October I attended DDD East Midlands . It is a community run conference for Developers (the D’s stand for Developer) and I had a great time, I have been to DDD North before but this was the first time going to Nottingham for a conference (I grew up in Nottingham, or a town not far from). As I have said before there is nothing quite like chatting over coffee or lunch with fellow Developers about the tech you are learning about, this was probably my favourite thing about conferences. Now on to the talks:

Dungeons, Dragons and Developers

Matt Brunt gave an excellent keynote talk, comparing the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons with working on Software projects. A good D&D game involves team work, very like a good Software Team. A team of all wizards isn’t going to get you very far, the same way a team full of developers that excel at algorithms, won’t be good at testing, talking to customers etc. A wizard that has a secret spell to defeat the Troll under the bridge, is almost as bad as a developer that hordes his knowledge and “saves the day” when things go wrong. Keeping connected with your team as you go out on your quest so no one gets lost is as important as keeping connected with your software team.

Microservice Mistakes

Matt Hunt talked about microservice mistakes he had made.

Long lived small teams
Can’t test by only interacting with the frontend
Use events as well as API calls
Need to be able to deploy independently of each other
Have a specific reason for using microservices, a problem to solve

The Art of the Bad Code Review

A 15 minute lightning talk with Martyn Kilbryde A fun talk showing some examples of bad code reviews, a few takeaways from this:

Explain what is being fixed with a link to the ticket
Give specific, actionable feedback
Balance the boy scout rule of leaving the code better than when you found it with do one thing rule
Don’t make assumptions -> have a conversation instead
Be helpful and constructive, not dismissive and negative
Use a branch per ticket, don’t tie them together
Refer to the requirements
No room for ego, code belongs to the team not an individual
Avoid overly verbose comments
Pragmatism is important
If urgent, raise additional tickets with tech debt issues
Challenge if necessary, but do so respectfully
Don’t do a piecemeal review

Git Under the covers

Another 15 minute lightning talk with Dan Clarke This looked at the inner workings of git, this was fascinating as every part points at another part which is obviously part of the reason git is so powerful. It was quite technical and I am sure some of it went over my head.

This talk could have been a blog post

Another 15 minute lightning talk with Jamie Tanna . This was a good talk about the importance of blogging. He used the phrase blogumentation, now I have heard of this before but not its name. It is where you use your blog to document what you have learnt, it can be anything a new command or a new language or technology. This talk inspired me to write this blog post, Thank you Jamie. His blog can be found at https://www.jvt.me/posts/2023/10/07/why-blog/

How to create the conditions where happy people do their best work

Paul Bailey introduced the concept of Communities of Practice. Lots of the features of a Community of Practice I have heard of or been in teams that implement. “Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”

Building Robots for Complete Beginners

Last talk of the day was my favourite (because it was about Robots) Mark Goodwin talked about building Robots using Rasbery Pi Pico (a microcontroller board), most of his examples used python. His demo can be found at https://github.com/computerist/robot-demos This fascinated me as I have already dipped my toe into this area when playing with microbits

Picard Season 3

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Last night I had a bit of a chat about season 3 of Star Trek Picard.

Before #startrek #Picard S3ep2 airs this week; @danielhuckfield Special Guest @funkysi1701 and @hitch_daniel chat about the first episode on the Nexus Nights spin-off show.https://t.co/Jyov53z7hC
— The Temporal Trek Podcast(s) (@rider_coattail) February 23, 2023

Here is the episode I recorded: TTNN Ep 36 - PIC S3ep1 Reaction Chat

Dan and Dan are joined by previous Temporal Trek guest Si Foster for a little chinwag over the return of PICARD for the final season.

Badass Bev, Starships of Thesseus, love to loathe Captain Shaw, Predictions and More.

It was great fun to record and I hope you enjoy giving it a listen., Hopefully I will be back at the end of the season to discuss the conclusion.

How much does it cost?

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

How much does it Cost to run my side projects? This is going to be an interesting look at my spending, hopefully it can show you can do a lot without breaking the bank!

I have a personal Azure subscription that I pay for myself. I don’t use anything connected to my work, as jobs change and I don’t want to have to shift stuff if I change employers (which happened quite recently). I like Azure, and I like learning what I can do with it, so spending small amounts on a personal subscription is not a problem for me.

This is how much Azure is costing me daily, I like to keep an eye on this chart fairly often so I can see if I get any increases, especially if I have added a new service.

This is my monthly charges over the last few months. In Sept/Oct I switched from CosmosDB to Mongo DB Atlas as my database backend. Experience has told me that my biggest charge is data storage, websites are cheap but any database or storage is what tends to cost the most.

This website you are reading this on (assuming you are not on DevTo or Hashnode) is running Hugo which runs on an Azure Static Web App, the free tier so almost free. I have two of these, a production one and a test one. Source code is on Github (another free service), and auto deploys via Github actions. I have a load of images which I have stuffed in blob storage from when I used to run a wordpress site, the cost for file storage is minimal.

I also have a service I built using Azure Functions and Static Web Apps which makes use of public APIs like (Twitter/Mastodon/GitHub etc), data for this is stored in the free tier of Mongo DB Atlas. I then use consumption tier Azure Functions and Free Static Web App to do stuff. The definition of what I have deployed is all setup in Pulumi, so I have identical environments for Dev/Test/Prod mostly because I can rather than it being business critical or getting a lot of traffic.

I currently have 240Mb of data in my free MongoDb database, I have 512 Mb max storage to play with. I have plenty of data to play with at this tier, but I may investigate other options that involve storing less or what costs might be. I previously made use of cosmosDB, which was costing me between £10-£20 per month, so not breaking the bank, but also cheaper to use MongoDB.

Interrogating the Azure Cost Analysis tool reveals that my biggest cost is file storage (67p Prod, 101p Test and 93p Dev), I may investigate this a bit and see what is using this, but its not breaking the bank so I am pretty happy.

So what else does it cost to run my things?

My domains live on CloudFlare, I recently got a bill for £8.04 for a couple of renewals for the next 12 months. But I am struggling to think what else costs me to run my digital things.

Podcasts I have been listening to

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Another week has gone by so here is a rundown of my podcasts listenings…

Hachyderm’s Kris Nova on running a Mastodon Server

Hanselminutes episode 871

A great chat about how Hachderm grew as people moved from Twitter to Mastodon. You can find me on Hachyderm https://hachyderm.io/@funkysi1701 Hachyderm saw amazing growth in a short space of time, so great to hear how that impacted the service, which Kris Nova provides for free in her own time.

The Shipment

The Temporal Trek Season 3 episode 58

DanDan discuss the season 3 episode The Shipment, which sees Enterprise season 3 back on track, with a proper Star Trek story. But I can’t believe Dan forgot to include the DanDan jingle its why I tune in each week.

TrekRanks Potpouri

TrekRanks episode 150

This was a great show celebrating 150 shows, and was a lucky dip into all the 149 topics that have been chosen before. Jim was caught out by the guests this week as they went above and beyond finding answers for all possible shows that could be picked. As always some great picks reminding me why I love the show.

Troy Hunt’s Weekly Update

Weekly Update 327

I like listening to what Troy has been up to in the last week. (I am a bit behind as this show came out at Christmas time) Troy talks about Twitter and Elon Musk, and the LastPass data breach. I am a big fan of 1Password for my password manager but my employer uses LastPass

Troy Vinson: Learning From the Rackspace Security Breach

Azure DevOps Podcast Episode 225

An interesting look at security and the recent rackspace incident. I used to be a big fan of Rackspace but in recent years I have been more interested in cloud offerings like Azure.

Dr. Gregory Kapfhammer wants to stop flaky tests

Hanselminutes episode 874

I am currently looking at fixing some flaky tests on a codebase I am not familiar with so this is a great podcast to listen to. The episode goes through common reactions to flaky tests, why tests get flaky and what to do about them.

What podcasts have I been listening to

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I love listening to podcasts so I thought I would share what I have been listening to over the last few days.

Source Open vs Open Source and IdentityServer with Dominick Baier and Brock Allen

.Net Rocks episode 1824

The creators of the open source project Identity Server which went commercial discuss the reasons for doing so. This was a very interesting discussion on the challenges of running open source projects and ways that they can be more maintainable. I have seen Twitter arguments on both sides about various products that have done this. It is a very nuanced problem, which I don’t know much about so interesting hearing what was involved.

Growing as an Engineering Manager with Taylor Poindexter

Hanselminutes episode 871

A discussion about being an engineering manager, mentoring and growing and learning. I am not a manager and I don’t have people that report to me, however, I am a senior developer so anything that can help me improve on the leadership side of things is great. On a side note, I love how diverse the guests are on Hanselminutes, I often listen to people on this show I would never have heard of or known about if I just stuck to topics I know about.

Top 5 Scenes at a Table

TrekRanks episode 149

Star Trek for me has always been about positivity and Trek Ranks delivers this in spades. The concept, in case you don’t know, is to choose 5 episodes about the chosen topic, but it is really an excuse to talk about them! So what 5 scenes at a table would I choose?

Undiscovered Country - Dinner with the Klingons. Klingons, Shakespeare, terrible table manners what is not to love about this scene
Q Who - Scene in the observation lounge with Q and Guinan as they discuss how to respond to the newly discovered Borg
Civil Defence - Scene in Ops between Garak and Dukat while the crew hide from an automated phaser firing at them, the best bit is when Duakt tried to leave and ends up trapped with the rest of the crew
Mirror, Mirror - Scene where Bones realises that some things are the same in the mirror universe, the spot where he spilt acid
Unification Part 2 - Spock, Picard and Data have been captured by Sela, and Sela comments that she doesn’t get to write many speeches, and then Data comments that maybe she would be happy doing another job