The Monsters Weekly - Episode 22 - 'Realistic Prototype Data in ASP.NET Core with GenFu'

In this episode, Monster James walks you through the basics of prototyping a new feature in your application without having to do the grunt work of creating all the data you need to light the feature up in your UI.

The Monsters Weekly - Episode 22 - 'Realistic Prototype Data in ASP.NET Core with GenFu'

In this episode, Monster James walks you through the basics of prototyping a new feature in your application without having to do the grunt work of creating all the data you need to light the feature up in your UI.

GenFu is an open source library (created by the Monsters!) that allows you to save hours of work when you’re asked to create lists of data to support a test or prototype. When you build out a user experience it’s often better to have data that looks realistic, which is old-hat for GenFu. Need 10,000 rows of data in your DB? Yeah, it can help you do that, too.

Be sure to check out our follow-up episode when we dive into even more advanced use cases.

Check out GenFu:

The Monsters Weekly - Episode 21 - 'Donuts, Donut Holes & Razor Output Caching with Tag Helpers'

In this episode, Dave takes us through caching Razor output using the ASP.NET Core MVC Cache Tag Helper. We look at the different ways you can think about how to break down a page and how it can relate to optimizing your site’s performance.

While not everyone will need the benefit of output caching, any site with multiple web servers running, all accessing the same backend services should likely consider the merits. While other layers and services may provide their own approaches to minimizing resource-intensive lookups, this is just one other tool in the belt to help keep your site snappy.

The Monsters Weekly - Episode 21 - 'Donuts, Donut Holes & Razor Output Caching with Tag Helpers'

In this episode, Dave takes us through caching Razor output using the ASP.NET Core MVC Cache Tag Helper. We look at the different ways you can think about how to break down a page and how it can relate to optimizing your site’s performance.

While not everyone will need the benefit of output caching, any site with multiple web servers running, all accessing the same backend services should likely consider the merits. While other layers and services may provide their own approaches to minimizing resource-intensive lookups, this is just one other tool in the belt to help keep your site snappy.

The Monsters Weekly - Episode 20 - 'Docs and GitHub Repos'

Join us for a quick tour of the Documentation and GitHub repos for ASP.NET Core.

The Monsters Weekly - Episode 19 - 'Building Advanced Tag Helpers'

Back in Episode 7 we looked at creating custom tag helpers in ASP.NET Core MVC. This week, we take a look at a more advanced scenario where a custom tag helper can be used to cleanup our markup and help enforce consistency.

The Monsters Weekly - Episode 19 - 'Building Advanced Tag Helpers'

Back in Episode 7 we looked at creating custom tag helpers in ASP.NET Core MVC. This week, we take a look at a more advanced scenario where a custom tag helper can be used to cleanup our markup and help enforce consistency.

Dave walks us through building a tag helper that is made up of multiple parts. He shows us how to use the TagHelperContext to communicate between parent and child tag helpers while Simon engages in an epic battle with the mysterious green ooze.

Do you have questions? Yeah, so do we! Start a conversation below and we’ll learn together as we go.

The Monsters Weekly - Episode 18 - Using Build Hooks to Build Docker Containers

Building and packaging is super fun with the new build framework in ASP.NET Core.  In this episode we take a look at how to hook into the various different stages of the build. There is a bit more about the build hooks at http://docs.asp.net/en/latest/dnx/projects.html#scripts

Build hooks are entry points into the build pipeline that allow you to interact with the build system, assets in your project or artifacts that result from the build. These are a powerful tool for developers and can be used for a variety of scenarios.

The Monsters Weekly - Episode 17 - 'Structured Logging with Serilog in ASP.NET Core'

In our previous episode we had a look at the built-in mechanisms which we are afforded by virtue of using ASP.NET Core. Now it’s time to take a deeper look at a fundamental concept to modern logging - structured log messages - and how to take advantage of it.

The Monsters Weekly - Episode 17 - 'Structured Logging with Serilog in ASP.NET Core'

In our previous episode we had a look at the built-in mechanisms which we are afforded by virtue of using ASP.NET Core. Now it’s time to take a deeper look at a fundamental concept to modern logging - structured log messages - and how to take advantage of it.

In this installment in our series, Monster James is diving into what it takes to use a third-party logging library and an HTTP logging service to capture serialized, structured logs. We’ll look at an installation of Seq to capture the logs, and Serilog to push logs to the server.

Do you have questions? Yeah, so do we! Start a conversation below and we’ll learn together as we go.