Problem in my local paradise: Func CLI doesn't upgrade

Last Friday, I encountered an issue while trying to run my Azure Function locally using VS Code. Despite having installed the Azure Function extension and the Azure Functions Core Tools, I was unable to execute the func start command without encountering an error saying that no functions could be found. 

In this post, I will share the various troubleshooting steps I took, what didn’t work, and how I ultimately resolved the issue. Spoiler alert: everything is now working correctly.

The Problem

My Azure Function is a .NET 8 Isolated HTTP trigger. When I attempted to execute the func start command, it failed to find any functions. A quick look at the documentation, I discovered that version 4 of the Core Tools was required for type Isolated process. However, I had already installed version 4 via the update popup in VS Code.

Something was wrong. I tried func --version and it returned 3.x.xx, weird... And this is how I knew there was a problem.

Failed attempts

Following the Azure Functions Core Tools documentation I found that there were multiple methods to install the Core Tools. Because that laptop was on Windows 11, I started by downloading the func-cli-x64.msi installer and run it. It didn't work, the version 3 was still there.

I tried to install the Core Tools v4 using NPM: npm install -g azure-functions-core-tools@4. It didn't work.

I tried to uninstall the version 3 with npm uninstall -g azure-functions-core-tools. I tried using the command palette in VSCode

Still nothing was changing anything, the version 3 was still there.

The Solution

What works, was using Chocolatey command choco uninstall azure-functions-core-tools to uninstall the version 3. Some how, it must have been install at the different location or some "config" got lost at some point (it's a developer laptop after all), and the other methods (npm, msi, vscode) couldn't see that version 3 was installed.

After that, I installed the version 4 using NPM npm install -g azure-functions-core-tools@4. And it worked! The func --version returned 4.0.5571 and the func start command found my function.

I wrote this quick post hoping that it can help someone else, as I cannot be the only one with this problem.

~Frank

Reading Notes #564

Monday! It is time to share my reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all blog posts that catch my interest during the week. 

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

 

Cloud

• How To: Remote Debug a Deployed Azure Function using Visual Studio 2022 (Jamie Maguire) - Because sometimes the only solution is to debug live from the cloud. It's great that it's possible.

• Enabling Azure Application Insights for an App Service (David Giard) - It's one of those tools it's right there and you didn't know you couldn't live without until you try it and you get all that information.

DevOps

• Modifying Docker images during Kubernetes deployments (Matthew Casperson) - This is a very detailed tutorial that helps and explains clearly each step of that deployment pipeline.

Programming

• Tech Notes: Quick hacks on GitHub Pages (Evan Martin) - Nice git tricks.

• Debugging distributed systems is hard! (Dennis Frühauff) - This is a very nice post that explains clearly a situation. How many of us have been in this situation before where you try to debug a system and it's just so hard?

• Healthcare and Life Sciences Blog (Kyle Raymond) - This is a cool tutorial/ example that explains what is and how to use semantic Kernel.

Data

• Speeding up Queries with Materialized Views (Derek Comartin) - Great post that will inspire us on how to get the best performance for our databases.

~Frank

Reading Notes #533

Good Monday!

It's time to share my reading notes. Those are a curated list of all the articles and blog posts, that caught my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Azure SQL Trigger for Azure Functions in Public Preview (Renato Losio) - This is interesting this way you could beneficiate the trigger and keep the code outside of the database.

Programming

• Install Terminal App Themes in Windows 11 (Sofia Sondh) - Simple and we have the choice, great!

• My Top 10 Visual Studio Code Extensions for 2022 (John Kilmister) - Oh wow, there were a few gems I didn't know in this post. Great list.

• Ref vs Out C#: Which is the Better Choice when? (Byte Hide) - A simple post that lists the differences between those two keywords.

• Web Security 101 - Part 1: Secrets (Abbey Perini) - This is a nice post that lists places or methods to save our secrets and explains the pro and cons of each.

• Fluent Insights EP4: Slots (Paul Gildea) - The new episode of Fluent UI Insights is out. This one talks about slots, JSX children, and triggers.

Miscellaneous

• 10 SEO Tips For Technical Writers And Software Developers (Mahesh Chand) - A great post about SEO and why we should care.

~Enjoy!

Reading Notes #505

Good Monday, Already time to share new reading notes. Here is a list of all the articles, blog posts, and podcast episodes that catch my interest during the week.

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Application Insights telemetry in Azure Functions (Orestis Meikopoulos) - Application Insights is so powerful and just one click away! Learn more about it in this post.

• Azure Function with PowerShell and the Power BI REST API – SQLServerCentral (Koen Verbeeck) - This is a nice step-by-step tutorial to write an azure function. All important points to do and avoid are present just like the code.

• Just Give Me an Access Token (Phil Jirsa) - Nice video tutorial and code snippet to get all the access your API needs.

• Update Your Azure Functions Table Storage Bindings (Mark Heath) - Nice post. Upgrading can be frightening sometimes, even more, when you know there are breaking changes.

Programming

• Auto publish your data using Travis (Montana Mendy) - A super quick example of ci-cd with Travis.

• Build configuration for Azure Static Web Apps (craigshoemaker, anthonychu, Reshmi-Sriram, changeworld) - Continuous deployment is so powerful it is very useful to understand the options and how you can set your things together.

• Introduction to Testing Blazor WebAssembly With bUnit (Code Maze) - Wow! An incredibly complete tutorial about bUnit. It is the best lace to get started.

• Multiple Directories for Static Files in ASP.NET Core (Shawn Wildermuth) - Nice journey of an issue that in the end wasn't one. It's time to learn.

• Why isn't my ASP.NET Core app in Docker working? (Andrew Lock) - A very interesting post that describes the learning process while building and fixing a container.

Miscellaneous

• This Is The Most Fun Way To Make Your Life Awesome - Barking Up The Wrong Tree (Eric) - Nice excerpt from a book about communication, this part is couple focus.

~frank

Reading Notes #495

Good Monday, 

Already time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

Suggestion of the week

• Include diagrams in your Markdown files with Mermaid (Martin Woodward, Adam Biagianti) - This is very interesting. For a simple little diagram, we can now do that in text in the same document... Looking forward to trying it. Mermaid is also supported in Azure DevOps

Cloud

• Azure CLI: Delete All Resources Within Resource Group (Chris Pietschmann) - Nice tips to delete all resources in a resources group. However I prefer deploying an empty resource group with override, work each time, and the command seems simpler.

• Creating Azure DevOps WIKI Pages from within a pipeline - part 2 (Stefan Stranger) - Super cools automation during a deployment. I love it.

• Host Static Web Sites for Free in Azure (Sameer Doshi) - There are still so many running on complex systems. Have a look.

• Isolated Azure Function in .Net 6 (Paul Michaels) - A nice short post that highlights the differences between these two types/versions of functions

• Start Creating Azure Bicep Modules for Code Reuse (Chris Pietschmann) - That looks amazing, and simple to do. I have a few complex ARM templates, I should try to break them down in bicep to make them easier to read and maintain.

Programming

• Observer Design Pattern in C# (Code Maze) - A really clear tutorial. I've been waiting for this kind of refresh to implement this pattern in a text-based game I was building... Maybe now is the time.

• 10 Best C# NuGet Packages to Improve Your Productivity in 2022 (Rajeshwari Pandinagarajan) - What I like with those lists of tools/ packages is that most of the time you found something you didn't know.

• Disguising Podman as Docker Desktop on Windows (Mark Richards) - Nice! A Docker alternative that could potentially interest many, but for myself, I will stick to Docker. I'm an occasional citizen, and I feel there will be more docs with the current favorite.

• Happy 20th Anniversary, .NET! (Beth Massi) - Very happy to see .NET reaching 20 so strong. Nice post, nice video packed with interesting anecdotes and nice moments.

• Introducing FakeAuth for .NET Core (Caleb Jenkins) - That looks very interesting! For PoC, demo, or temporary solution it's brilliant. Code and sample in GitHub.

Book

Greenlights

Author: Matthew McConaughey

This autobiography is funny, light, interesting, and even weird at some moments. But you know what? I liked it. I totally kept some quotes, as I found them good. I partially read it and listen to it. The audio version is done by Matthew and it's nice to hear him telling us his story.

~frank

 

Reading Notes #493

Good Monday, Already time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

Just for the of it, I did a little funny video to answer the question: Where really is cloud computing? 

Watch it on your favorite platform ;) YouTube - TikTok

Cloud

• Migrating from GitHub Pages to Azure Static Web Apps | I CAN MAKE THIS WORK (John Reilly) - This is a good tutorial that leverages the GitHub deployment to Azure.

• Tip 352 - How to trigger an Azure Function from Azure Cosmos DB | Azure Tips and Tricks - This is a clear tutorial about how to use an Azure function trigger connected to Azure Cosmo DB. Simple but very powerful.

Programming

• Minimal APIs, Blazor Improvements, and Tools Updates in ASP.NET Core 6 (Antonio Liccardi) - So many goodies in the last few days.

• Azure Static Web Apps, Blazor, Authentication and Visual Studio 2022 (Scott Kuhl) - There is a little bit more work than I would like but there is also a lot to interact with and monitor locally. Thanks to this clear tutorial we have all the steps to reproduce.

• Comparison of Dependency Injection in .NET (Nickolas Fisher) - A very complete tutorial, with all the required code even the GitHub reference. The perfect example to get started.

• VS Code Gets New Side Panel in v1.64 Update (David Ramel) - Nice! I like this new menu functionality.

Podcasts

• 291: GitHub Actions All The Things (Merge Conflict) - Sometimes building a CI-CD feels too cumbersome, but it's probably worth it. In this episode Frank and James share and they found their balance.
• Greg on The Power Of The Graceful No (What's Essential) - It's so hard some time to say this simple word... But it is an important, nice episode.
• Shaun Walker on Blazor and Oqtane - Episode 179 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Nice discussion with the creator of DotNetNuke and more recently Oqtane, about .Net and Blazor for today's solution.
• 564: Make Your Reading More Meaningful, with Sönke Ahrens (Coaching for Leaders) - As far as I can remember, I always struggled with taking "good" notes. Interesting topic, a few good tips, and tricks.
• Game Console 2.0: A Photographic History with Evan Amos (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Really interesting interview about... yes, photography. Scott is chatting with the photographer of those amazing images of the game consoles.

~Frank

Reading Notes #475

Every "Monday", I share my reading notes. Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

The suggestion of the week

• What makes a good Git commit? (Al Tenhundfeld) - Great post. It's always good to read opinions from others about collaborating as it helps to better understand others, be in their shoes, and then become a better team player.

Cloud

• Azure Service Bus: Queues vs Topics (Davide Bellone) - Most people know about queues but topics is not as well known. This is a great post to understand why, how, and what you need.

• Azure Service Bus and C# - an introduction (Davide Bellone) - This is a nice and detailed post perfect to get started with the service Bus and queues.

• Building and auto-deploying an ASP.NET Core application - Part 7 - Improving your build and release processes ( Imar Spaanjaars) - This series is gold for anyone interested to learn more about best practices when deploying. It covers many different scenarios and got into the details.

• Creating Azure Functions, Custom Connectors and using them inside of Power apps (Charles Sterling) - Quick tutorial that connects two amazing tools.

• Leveling Up Static Web Apps With the CLI (Aaron Powell) - A pretty cool demo running locally. The explanation of the tasks fike is awesome.

Programming

• Best Practices for Microservices (dilshan ukwattage) - 7 best practices to help us building great microservices solutions.

• Conditional compilation for ignoring method calls with the ConditionalAttribute (Andrew Lock) - An interesting post about commands that we don't see that often, or at least that I don't see often.

• How to use GitHub actions and Contentful webhooks to show your latest blog posts on your GitHub profile README (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Wow, This is pretty cool! I didn't think we could do this kind of thing with our page...but I guess we can do all we want; love it.

• Extending HttpClient Testing With Templating (Adam Storr) - A nice quick post that shares unit test pattern

• Exploring .NET interactive notebooks with VS Code (Andrew Lock) - Nice practical utilization of that tech and I love the historic vibe into it.

• Git – What to do when things go wrong (pcmichaels) - Wonderful post...We all been there when we screwed up then not sure how to fix things. This post is packed with helpful commands and explanations on how to use them and the expected result

Miscellaneous

• Diagram as Code with Diagrams (Sam Cogan) - Interesting tool, I use drawio most of the time because it doesn't require any installation, but I am curious to see it.

• Speaking CTO (Gregor Hohpe) - Nive post with really good and simple best practices.

~Frank

Reading Notes #468

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Bicep - Why do we need yet another way to deploy stuff in Azure? (Mark Heath) - I still didn't play with bicep, but really looking forward to it. This post just made me even more excited about finally trying g it.

• Why won't you load my configuration Azure Functions? (Adam Storr) - Yes, it can definitely be a little confusing at the beginning, but that way is the secure way.

• Common Misconception #2 – Serverless is good for APIs (Jason Farrell) - Interesting post about lamda and serverless in general.

Programming

• How to make Command Prompt, PowerShell, or any Shell launch from the Start Menu directly into Windows Terminal (Scott Hanselman) - This is just what I was looking for amazing... And so simple!

• Monitoring and Observability in Cloud-Native ASP.NET Core apps | ASP.NET Blog (Nish Anil) - Nice post about this misunderstood topic. There are good examples and references to it. Excellent pairing it Scott Hanselman podcast episode with Tori Wieldt.

• The Windows Terminal made better with the Command Palette plus Multiple Actions in one Command (Scott Hanselman) - Wow, okay this is super cool and even more useful... Let's get started!

• Who Is Responsible For Building Tests? - Redgate Software (Grant Fritchey) - That's an excellent question! What's your answer?

Miscellaneous

• Add Developer PowerShell and Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio to Windows Terminal (Luise) - Del

• What shall I use for managing tasks? Email? Outlook Tasks? Planner? To Do or even OneNote? (Luise) - Still, using pen and paper and thinking to move digital? This post is for you.

~Frank

Reading Notes #467

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

This week's image brings us to 2017, back when I was a Microsoft MVP, yes my name is on that wall with so many of my friends! Have I great summit this week!

Cloud

• Azure Functions Support for node.JS 14 and .Net 5 Is Now Generally Available (Steef-Jan Wiggers Follow) - A quick post that detailed what is new and why it's nice.

• Azure Workbooks - Set it to Auto-Refresh (Shikha Jain) - Your mouse will thanks you, because of less clicks.

• Cloud-Native learning resources for .NET developers (Nish Anil) - A nice post that explains the cloud-native idea and lists sooooo many resources to get started.

Programming

• 5 things to include in your project ASAP (Lior Bragilevsky) - This is a very JavaScript focus post, but easily portable to other languages.

• Debugging configuration values in ASP.NET Core (Andrew Lock) - A great tutorial that teaches some great ways to debug and inspect the appSettings.

• Introducing AWS SSO support in the AWS Toolkit for VS Code | Amazon Web Services (Garret Sweetwood) - Another great VS Code extension, this time to help you with your authentification with AWS.

• Scaling Microservices on Kubernetes (Ashley Davis) - Interesting post about scaling. Scaling horizontally, vertically the advantages and complexities of each options.

• Tetris in Blazor WebAssembly (Matthew Jones ) - I keep repeating it, coding is fun and creative! Learn more about this cool open source project in this post.

• The common misconception about TypeScript (Narasimha Prasanna HN) - This is a great post that shares simple best practices in TypeScript.

Miscellaneous

• Get better at programming by learning how things work (Julia Evans) - Inspirational post to stay curious and keep learning.

~Frank

Reading Notes #462

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". This is a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

Cloud

• Azure Functions in C# quick FAQs and tips ( Dominique St-Amand) - Nice post that answers the frequent questions and shares best practices.

• Using Multiple Accounts with Azure (Sam Cogan) - Nice tips a must. So helpful.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core Dependency Injection: What is the IServiceCollection? (Steve Gordon) - A very clear and complete tutorial.Taking us from zero and teaching us what it is, how it works, how to use it, and some best practices.

• Announcing Dapr v1.0 (Dapr project maintainers) - A great new open-source tool just got to v1. This post will tell you all about it.

• Building an Android app with .NET 6 (Nick) - This is so cool. Looking Good.

• DotNet Boxed includes prescriptive templates for .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This is super cool. I really like and appreciate how the .Net CLI is builded.

• Visual Studio 2019 Docker Tooling (Mark Heath) - A nice post that shows how those two great tools work together.

• What is the difference between a DTO and a POCO (or POJO) (Steve (ardalis) Smith) - A very clear explanation. Straight to the point.

• Blazor on Desktop (Sam Basu ) - This post demonstrates by showing how to build those two flavors that it is possible to build a desktop app. Interesting.

Miscellaneous

• 7 Ways to Improve Your Developer Ads � DeveloperMedia - Marketing is hard. I'm not sure developers are that different than others. those tips felt good, they are probably good with all audiences.

~Frank

Reading Notes #461

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". This is a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

The suggestions of the week

• Visual Studio Code comes to Raspberry Pi - Raspberry Pi (Jim Bennett) - Great post from Jim. You can feel his excitement about this news... It's really motivating.

• Master These Three Skills to Improve Time Management 🚀 (Anastasia) - Wow. This post contains tons of information, references, and good advice. To read.

Cloud

• What Is Azure Functions (Mahesh Chand) - The great simple post that explains what is an Azure Function and how to create/ debug/ deploy one

Programming

• Creating a Running Game in VueJS - Part 3 - Component Files and Installing Vue - The Long Walk (Paul Michaels) - Interesting step by spet tutorial part 3 of a series.

• How to Install Windows Software Remotely Using PowerShell and Chocolatey - Petri (Russell Smith) - A very cool and simple way to solve a common difficulty why all those new people not working in the office.

• Open-source HTTP API packages and tools (Brady Gaster) - Excellent tutorial, second post of a series. It's definitely a great place to get started.

• Save the Date for .NET Conf: Focus on Windows, February 25, 2021 (Katie Akrop DeSantis) - Looking forward to this event. Thursday the 25th.

• Creating Discoverable HTTP APIs with ASP.NET Core 5 Web API | ASP.NET Blog (Brady Gaster) - An extremely complete tutorial to learn more about API.

Podcast

• Épisode 11 - La famine en Ukraine (Les Pires Moments de l'Histoire) - OMG! I have nothing else to say. I knew that part of the history was dark and complex... but I knew nothing. Great episode.

• SPI 457: The Secret to Taking Risks & How to Make It Work - Behind the Scenes with Katie Kimbal (The Smart Passive Income Online Business) - Very motivating episode. When we start a journey we don't know most of the time where our decisions will bring us. Therefore it's always frightening to take risks, but with time and effort... grandiose thing can appends

• Containers on Azure with Tom Kerkhove (.NET Rocks!) - What a great episode! And it's so true there is so many ways "to do your containers" ( like in a recipe )

• Épisode 87 - La sécurité des coureuses (Grand écart) - Sometimes I feel so ashamed to be a man... I know I'm doing it right, but I need to do more... for the others that forgot that we are all equal.

• 633 - How to Use Rejection to Your Advantage (Modern Mentor) - In our lives, we will encounter many nos or rejection. This episode talks about how you could use those detours to learn more, and transform them in opportunities.

• 101: Windows Virtual Desktop with Travis Roberts (CloudSkills.fm) - I remember when "infra" people couldn't see anything positive about the cloud... Times as changed a lot. There are so many opportunities.

• The myth of turning your hobby into a job with writer Aley Arion (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Is it a myth or a reality? I totally think it's possible. But yeah in all the amazing love (or adventure) movies there are always some challenges. But happy 95% of the time.. I take that!

Miscellaneous

• Fun times with batch files : Algorithms for the masses - julian m bucknall (Julian M Bucknall) - Nice journey in the bach world.

• Scheduling Integration with the Azure Health Bot (Gregory Lisiak) - Nice way to use technology, today, to help to educate people.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

~Frank

Reading Notes #454

Cloud

• .NET 5 support on Azure Functions (Anthony Chu ) - Great news we cant start playing with the preview today

• Remote Debugging for Azure Functions Can Be a Breeze (Simon Timms) - A nice post that gives a little bit of history and architecture information, before showing how to use the product named Ozcode for debugging.

Programming

• Best 5 Tools for Node.js Monitoring (Olivia Diaz) - As a new Node.js developer I am pretty pleased to see all these tools. All bookmarked.

• How to MongoDB in C# - Part 1 (Rami Honig) - A really great tutorial with tons of code and examples to learn how to use MongoDB.

• New from Universe 2020: Dark mode, GitHub Sponsors for companies, and more (Shanku Niyogi) - Don't miss the keynote (it's available on demand), it's 15 mins highlighting some pretty cool new features... Or this post.

• You should be customizing your PowerShell Prompt with PSReadLine (Scott Hanselman) - Wanna customized your prompt? This post contains references to all previous tweaking posts and goes into detail about PsReadline.

Podcast

• PI 450: Entrepreneur Growth, Self-Discovery, and Pivoting in Tough Times (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - Very inspiring women that definitely knows how to "bounce" when things don't go how planned.

• Optimizing for Happiness with Alfonso Cabrera (Screaming in the Cloud) - Great episode all DevOps related

Books

Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It 

(Adam Savage) 

- I really liked this book. In fact, As I was reading the first chapter I was "earing" Adam's voice. So instead of creating that voice in my head I bought the audiobook and let Adam himself tells me his story. This is the best book I listen to this year. It was inspiring and empowering.

Reading Notes #453

Cloud

• Handling Events Inside an Azure Function (Paul Michaels) - Great post that explains, both the bug/ cause and how to fix the problem.

• How to Deploy a Blazor Application in Azure App Service (Sridhar Narasimhan) - Nice post to learn quickly different ways to deploy our apps.

Programming

• Organizing My Reaction GIFs Using Node.js, Sharp, And Angular 11.0.2 (Ben Nadel) - Definitely a cool project. The chance of failure should never block you to try, learn, or have fun.

• Docker V2 Github Action is Now GA - Docker Blog (Ben De St Paer-Gotch) - A really nice update on those actions.Nice

• Getting Started With NuGet 5.8 (Jon Douglas) - A very interesting post about the new features included in NuGet, and since it is the first one supporting .Net 5, some advice for a better experience.

• Understand The .NET 5 Runtime Environment (Khalid Abuhakmeh) - A helpful post that describes the different environment and their characteristics.

Miscellaneous

• Upgrading Blazor Blogs (Version 1.0 to Version 2.0) (null) - Nice little tutorial. It's upgrade time.

Podcasts

• What is a Developer Game Jam? (Coding Blocks) - Interesting episode about Game Jam... I barely know that universe. Yes, I said universe because it is a completely different world or better another dimension. There are tons of events and participants but you may never hear of that. It's very interesting.

• A Blast from the Past and Life's Interesting Journey — Back After 8 Years (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - Inspiring episode about how communities can be built and be interesting.

How to configure a secured custom domain on a Azure Function or website

I wanted to create this tutorial for a long time. How to map a naked domain on an Azure resource. It looks so complicated, but once you know what to do it's kind of simple in fact. In this post, I will share the three simple steps to do exactly this.

Step 1: Add Custom Domain

The first step is to map a domain on the application. The method I will explain uses a "www" domain (ex: www.fboucher.dev). To map directly a naked domain (ex: fboucher.dev) you would need to buy a wildcard certificate. However, I will show you in step three how to walk around this issue by using DNS rules.

From the Azure portal, open the Azure Function or App Service. From the left menu search for "custom", click the Custom domains option. In this panel click the button Add custom domain, and enter your www domain.

Click the validate button and follow the instruction to make the connection between the App Service and your domain provider.

Step 2: Adding a Certificate

Now that your custom domain is mapped, let's fix the "not secure" warning by adding a certificate. From the Azure portal return in the App blade. Repeat the previous search for "custom", and select the option TLS/SSL settings. Click the Private Key Certificates, and the Create App Service Managed Certificate button. Select the domain previously added and saved. It will take a few moments to create the certificate.

Go back in the Custom domains blade and click the Add binding button. Select the domain and certificate, don't forget to select the SNI SSL option and click the Add Binding button.

Step 3: Create the DNS Rules

Create an account in cloudflare.com and add a site for your domain. We will need to customize the DNS and create some Page Rules.

On the cloudflare.com note the 2 nameservers addresses. Go to the origin name provider (in my case godaddy) and replace the names of the nameservers with the value found on cloudflare.

Create a rule that will redirect all the incoming traffic from the naked-domain to www.domain. On the option on the top, click the Pages Rules (B). Then Click the Button Create Page Rule

In the field for If the URL matches: enter the naked-domain follow by /*. That will match everything coming from that URL

For the settings select Forwarding URL and 301- Permanent Redirect. Then the destination URL should be https://www. with your domain and /$1.

References

🔗 Map an existing custom DNS name to Azure App Service: https://c5m.ca/customDomain 

🔗 Secure a custom DNS name with a TLS/SSL binding in Azure App Service: https://c5m.ca/tls-ssl

Reading Notes #451

Cloud

• Migrating to the new C# Azure KeyVault SDK Libraries (Dominique St-Amand) - Learning a new SDK can be challenging and this post can help you lowering the learning curve. So much great feature.

• Tip 295 - What database should you use in your next Azure Functions app | Azure Tips and Tricks - A nice little post that shows different options to connect our azFunctions to a data store.

Programming

• 6 ways to narrow types in TypeScript (Carl Rippon) - This is a nice post that teaches how to avoid a few good exceptions.

• What's new in .NET Productivity (Mika Dumont) - In post offers a nice summary of the new feature available in the latest version of Roslyn.

• Your dotnet outdated is outdated! Update and help keep your .NET projects up to date (Scott Hanselman) - Wonderful! Easy to update and to use. Sold!

Miscellaneous

• Azure DevOps Boards and Excel! (Sarah Lean) - Pretty sweet tips for everyone.

Podcast

• 622 - Why Vulnerability Is a Misunderstood Professional Superpower (Modern Mentor) - First time on this podcast, but definitely not the last. Great show great topic.
• The Shorts -- Backyard Adventures (The Dirtbag Diaries) - One thing keep coming back to my head again and again as I was listening... Yeah, so true! I love it. Let's do small adventure.
• 227: Databases! (Merge Conflict) - So many great questions, a tons of answers, hypotheses, and laughs. Great show guys!
• Growing the next generation of technologists with CodeCrew's Meka Egwuekwe (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting questions. I really like discussion from a different point of view; for me.

Books

A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring

Author: John Wooden, John C. Maxwell

What a great book. I didn't know John Wooden before, but I am very impressed and inspired by both coach Wooden and the author. There is so much in this book and worth reading it again... But first, let's get prepare :)

Reading Notes #449

Cloud

• Deploying Minecraft on Azure (Sophia Parafina) - Interesting post that leverages Pulumi.

Programming

• Using the ASP.NET Core Environment Feature to manage Development vs. Production for any config file type (Scott Hanselman) - A nice tutorial that explains how to benefits of our environment in C#

• Building applications with C# and a Challenge! (Shayne Boyer) - Very happy to finally see C# to learn. I should have a look at all those modules...interactive he said...it looks awesome.

• Internationalization And Localization For Static Sites — Smashing Magazine (Sam Richard) - This is an amazing post that not only shows how they did it but explains why they did. Really interesting.

• Managing multiple SSH keys for authentication to GitHub on Windows 10 (Dominique St-Amand) - Nice tips to work securely with 2 ssh key.

• Node.js REST API Tutorial: Express.js and TypeScript (Marcos Henrique da Silva) - As I'm learning TypeScript/ Node.js for a project and was looking for how to structure and organized my project this post provide so much.

• Should Your Enterprise Pick Angular, React or Blazor? (Jon Hilton) - Of course, it depends, but I like how this post lets you think about many different aspects before making your decision.

• Best practice when naming Durable Functions in C# (Laurent Bugnion) - Nice update. So many developers will thank you later...

Miscellaneous

• How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time (Apoorva Govind) - In the end, what is most important is that you are happy. I like to continuously learn new things, but I also learn that for some people, this is not healthy. And it is totally fine.

Reading Notes #442

Cloud

• ASP.NET Core Configuration – Azure Key Vault (Vladimir Pecanac) - A nice tutorial that shows how to setup our keyvaul. All the commands and code snippets are there to help.

• Azure SDK Release (September 2020) | Azure SDK Blog (Jon Gallant) - Super SDK update...

• Introducing the new Azure Tables Client Libraries | Azure SDK Blog (Christopher Scott) - Storage is everywhere, this post is an excellent starting point to benefits of how the new SDKs can help us.

• Project Bicep Sneak Peek (Justin Yoo) - Very interesting new project from the ARM team. I really need to try it.

Programming

• Dependency Injection with Azure Functions (Joseph Guadagno) - Interesting code perspective on the AzFunctions.

• Azure Container Instances - Docker integration now in Docker Desktop stable release (MacKenzie Olson) - Learn more about this really useful integration in this post.

• Creating a Progressive Web App with Blazor WebAssembly -- Visual Studio Magazine (Peter Vogel) - A really cool idea, not perfect but pretty fun.

• Introduction à Bicep (Lucas de Carli) - A nice FRENCH post that gives us an introduction of Bicep and where it comes from.

• Making Scott Hanselman's Powerpoint Greenscreen trick work with RevealJS via Blazor Server (Jon Hilton) - Really cool post that shows the magic of another presentation tool.

• Starting to Use Git Hooks With a Team - Redgate Software (Grant Fritchey) - Interesting uses of the hook.nice.

• The First Blazor Dock Manager (Brian Lagunas) - Nice demo/ tutorial of the new dock manager with Blazor.The pretty cool component in this suite.

• VSCode Tips for Power Users (Boris Yordanov) - Because there is always something new that we can learn about this amazing tool.

Reading Notes #438

Cloud

• Azure Durable Functions Monitoring and Diagnostics (Damien Bod) - A nice tutorial to help us get more visibility on our Durable Functions.

• Authenticate Blazor WebAssembly with Azure Static Web Apps (Anthony Chu) - A great 

• tutorial that explains how to uses the socials account to authenticate our users in a Blazor app.

• Azure Cost Management + Billing updates – July 2020 (Michael Flanakin) - We all have a budget, this post helps us to stay up to date with the tool.

• Azure Durable Functions Monitoring and Diagnostics (Damien Bod) - If you are using (or planning to) the durable function this post is a must as it will ease your debugging / monitoring.

Programming

• Learn about the latest .NET Productivity features (Mika) - Nice post that describes in detail how to use the new feature of Roslyn.

• Sign Up for the Private Preview of Visual Studio support for Codespaces! (Nick) - Nice more codespace possibilities!

Miscellaneous

• .NET Foundation Board of Directors Election 2020: Results! (null) - After earing about this board on a .Net Rocks episode, I'm happy to see the result.

• THE EASY WAY how to SSH into Bash and WSL2 on Windows 10 from an external machine (Scott Hanselman) - Read 1 post and get 1 for free... Awesome and easy tips.

Reading Notes #434

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed. 

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• One Ops Question: What are Azure Blueprints? (Pierre Roman) - For post and nice little video that gives you everything you need a clear explanation and steps to get started.
• Using External Inputs in Azure Durable functions (Damien Bod) - A very nice tutorial with all the code we need, just as we all like.

Programming

• Always Use the for…of loop to iterate in JavaScript (Dhananjay Kumar) - I thought I knew how to loop in JavaScript, apparently, I didn't.
• Exciting new updates to the Git experience in Visual Studio | Visual Studio Blog (Pratik) - Wow, that nice update. Good tools are important when moving and merging code... We don't want to make mistakes.
• Getting Started With Kubernetes: Application Basics (Sophia Parafina) - A nice second post in a series on kubernetes. Learning layer by layer.awesome.
• How to Create and Delete Branches in Visual Studio Code (Jason N. Gaylord) - Nice quick tips. I didn't know how to delete it.

Podcasts

• AsapSCIENCE - YouTubers on Building a Creative Team, USA vs Canada and the Crossover of Art & Science (That Creative Life) - Cool podcast talking about sooo many things... like sciences, politics, and hangover...
• DOs and DON'Ts of your First 100 YouTube Subscribers (Your Thriving Side Hustle) - A nice little episode about the rebranding of the podcast, and some good tips for YouTubers who, are starting their channel.
• #164 – Facing Down an Existential Threat to Your Business with Scott Keyes of Scotts Cheap Flights (The Indie Hackers Podcast) - Interesting story about how an enterprise was built and adapted to the current time in a very difficult period in its market.
• 082: Starting Your DevOps Career from Scratch (CloudSkills.fm) - Discussion questions about DevOps, answering auditor questions: how to prepare, what to expect... very interesting.
• SPI 430: Passive Income Success Story: How Jacques Hopkins Finally Made (Significant) Money Online (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - Amazing episode once again, about an electric engineer that became an online piano teacher and live from it happy and nicely.

Miscellaneous

• Backing up an Azure database : Algorithms for the masses - julian m bucknall (Julian M Bucknall) - Just a reference to the Azure tips and tricks, but it still very worth it. Do your backups
• Best Markdown Editor (Jimmy McBride) - Nice cool project. As a markdown user, I will definitely have a look.
• How we launched docs.github.com (Sarah Schneider) - Wow, a very interesting story, and all that in one year.Impressive.

~☁️

Reading Notes #428

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting.

It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Azure AD Secured Serverless Cosmos DB from Blazor WebAssembly ( Jeremy Likness) - Great post that really explains how those pieces can work very well together.
• Creating an Azure Function from the Command Line (Jason N. Gaylord) - A nice tutorial that helps us to get started.

Programming

• Multiple Environments in ASP.NET Core (Code Maze) - Nice Asp.Net MVC tutorial.
• ASP.NET Core Series: Blazor (Jeremy Likness, Dan Roth) - Nice video to get started with Blazor.
• Developing on Docker with the new and improved Visual Studio Container Tools (and WSL2) (Scott Hanselman) - A great example that shows how easier it is now to start working with containers on Windows.
• Unit Testing in ASP .NET Core 3.1 (Shahed C) - A nice post that shows how to get started with xUnit the voted most popular test framework.

Miscellaneous

• APIs in the 2020s Panel (.NET Rocks!) - A virtual panel of awesome speakers that talked about API, REST, GraphQL, oData and so more. Lovely episode.
• 471: How to Say No Without Saying No, with Lois Frankel (Coaching for Leaders) - Saying No... being open. Really interesting topic. I put Lois Frankel: Nice Girls Don’t Speak Up or Stand Out in my to read list, that book maybe written for women in mind, but I think it is really interesting.
• Leveraging Our Emotional Goals (Developer Tea) - An interesting episode that talk about goals and what we need to do (or not) to achieved them.
• 203: Updating Open Source Projects (https://castbox.fm/episode/203%3A-Updating-Open-Source-Projects-id2117504-id267802246) - As I just create my first version in one of my open-source project I found the topic more than interesting... Thank you, great show.

Miscellaneous

• 20 productivity tools for the Linux terminal (Alan Smithee) - Cool app to try for our terminal.
• How to Stop Windows 10 Updates (5 Methods) (Mohammed Siddiqui) - I think you should only prevent auto-update when you really know what you are doing. Updates are easy to forget and therefore your PC could be at risk. That said, sometime it could really be a must.5misc.windows.update]
• Mirroring your Presence Status from the Microsoft Graph in Teams to LIFX or Hue bias lighting (Scott Hanselman) - Did this post just created new needs?! And you should check the keynote video linked to this post it was really a good one.

Books

  The Impossible First: From Fire to Ice—Crossing Antarctica Alone

  Author: Colin O'Brady

  An incredible adventure yes around the globe, but more important over the personal limits. I found this book very inspiring. I felt following him across the Antarctica... In the blizzard or in those deep moment. Great memoir, great adventure.

~enjoy!