.NET posts


  1. Identity-based attacks have become prevalent, and successful attacks are impactful. Attackers use increasingly sophisticated ways to breach privileged systems, so we must defend our accounts by elevating our identity security methods. Okta is committed to leading the industry in combating identity-based attacks through initiatives like the Secure Identity Commitment. Here…

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  2. Integrators Assemble!

    E. Dunham E. Dunham

    1 min read

    The Developer Podcast is back, focusing on all things integrator this season! In this introductory episode, you'll meet the hosts and learn what's in store for the rest of the season. We'll get more hands-on with technical and architectural identity integration topics through the season.

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  3. Whether or not you use Okta's products, you may find yourself working on software whose target audience includes Okta customers. Adding your application to the Okta Integration Network creates a smoother and less error-prone user management experience for these shared customers, and can unlock the potential of additional features as…

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  4. SMS has long played an important role as a universally applicable method of verifying a user's identity via one-time passcodes. And over the last decade, SMS and voice-based Multifactor Authentication has prevented untold attempts to compromise user accounts

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  5. Update: This post was updated in July 2026 to include OAuth 2.0 Private Key JWT authorization, Okta Admin Console integration for initiating Universal Logout end-to-end, and an optional OIN submission guide. The original post covered building the Global Token Revocation endpoint and securing it with an API key.

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  6. The End of Third-Party Cookies

    E. Dunham E. Dunham

    4 min read

    NOTE: In July, Google provided an update on their third-party cookie deprecation effort. Okta will work with Google to understand the specific impact on Okta customers. In the meantime, we continue to advise customers to migrate away from using third-party cookies, as outlined below.

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  7. Several challenges exist in provisioning users for a growing company across systems and applications. It can be time-consuming, error-prone, challenging to sync users across domains, and potentially a security risk to keep track of existing profiles. Fortunately, a protocol called SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) standardizes user information across…

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  8. Static API tokens have long been used to call external APIs and access the resources of third parties such as software vendors. As API standards have evolved, OAuth 2.0 emerged as the option offering more robust security, greater flexibility, and a better developer experience. Let's explore the advantages of moving…

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  9. Having an enterprise-ready SaaS application means your application supports authentication best practices, can scale across multiple customers and users, has automated means to re-create environments, and can securely add enhancements and value-adds your customers expect. Join this free virtual workshop series where we take your SaaS application on a journey…

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  10. Have you ever been inspired by a colleague's work and decided to explore a new tool or technology? That's what happened to me when my colleague, Andrea Chiarelli, wrote a blog post "Add Authentication to .NET MAUI Apps with Auth0." As someone who is always looking for ways to improve…

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  11. Join Us for Developer Day 2023

    Team Okta Team Okta

    1 min read

    We're thrilled to bring back Developer Day in 2023! Developer Day is an event for developers designed by developers. This year we're happy to announce this event is a free, two-day virtual event, so you can join us wherever you are! The event focuses on using identity to power secure…

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  12. Creating secure applications requires authentication. Delegating all the tedious details of the sign-in process to Okta is the most secure method to authenticate, not to mention speedier for development. So you'll see us advocating for and using the Okta-hosted sign-in page in our blog posts.

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  13. Cosmos DB is a cloud database product from Microsoft that offers scalable and high-performance services. The core product runs on a proprietary NoSQL database that should look familiar to experienced MongoDB developers. Microsoft offers several APIs in addition to the core Cosmos DB API. These include APIs for:

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  14. .NET 6 is here and many of us are making preparations to update .NET 5 codebases to .NET 6. As part of this review, today you will learn how to implement the client credentials flow in ASP.NET Core Web API.

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  15. 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.

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  16. CLIs are great. I love the speed and productivity increases I get when using a CLI, but memorizing commands – especially when commands need arguments, options, flags, and so on – can be daunting. Luckily, there are tools available for CLI fans out there, and one tool I've been enjoying…

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  17. 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 Services, you can add AI capabilities using pre-trained models, so you don't need machine learning or data science experience. Azure Cognitive Services has vision, speech, language,…

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  18. 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 as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation.

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  19. Okta Developer Plan Changes

    Ryan Stewart Ryan Stewart

    1 min read

    As many of you may know, Okta completed the acquisition of Auth0 in May of 2021. We've since been busy, working out how our products will work together to help developers provide the best experiences for their users. If you joined us for Developer Day, you saw Okta and Auth0…

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  20. It's been a big year for Okta and Auth0. Our two companies have officially joined forces over the past few months, and we are excited about the chance to shape the future of identity together. It's great to celebrate our combined developer communities at the first Developer Day event.

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  21. Amazon Web Services is one of the most popular cloud computing platforms on the planet. There's a good chance you will need to work in an AWS environment, which means publishing to one of their web server services like Elastic Beanstalk. The AWS platform is enormous, and this can be…

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  22. 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 Forms includes a layer of abstraction for developers so that you don't need to care about HTML, JavaScript, or any other front-end technology. It provides a…

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  23. 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 native applications, the recommended method for controlling access between your application and a resource server is the Authorization Code flow with a Proof Key for Code…

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  24. 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 as written. Replace the Okta CLI commands by manually configuring Okta following the instructions in our Developer Documentation.

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  25. Yesterday, Okta announced that we have finalized the acquisition of Auth0. You are probably looking at this blog post wondering what happens next for both companies. The post you are looking for, with a lot more details and information, is on the Auth0 blog. Please read it for more details…

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  26. As game creators, we hold a fundamental responsibility to protect and secure any and all data that our players entrust to us. Historically, security in games has not been high on the priority list because games were enjoyed anonymously and offline. But with our society becoming ever more connected, demand…

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  27. Common table expressions are a powerful feature of Microsoft SQL Server. They allow you to store a temporary result and execute a statement afterward using that result set. These can be helpful when trying to accomplish a complicated process that SQL Server isn't well suited to handle. CTEs allow you…

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  28. How to Use WebAuthn in C#

    Giorgi Dalakishvili Giorgi Dalakishvili

    7 min read

    Nowadays, using a password for authentication is becoming less and less secure. Password attacks are becoming more sophisticated, and data breaches occur more frequently. Have I Been Pwned, the website where you can check if your account has been compromised in a data breach, contains more than 10 billion accounts…

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  29. 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…

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  30. Introducing the Okta CLI

    Micah Silverman Micah Silverman

    6 min read

    Okta is an Identity Management Platform that takes all the hassle out of authentication and authorization. It's feature-packed with everything from workforce integrations for G-Suite to the latest version of OAuth 2.0 as-a-service for developers writing their own APIs.

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  31. 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, experiments, and proofs of concept, to massive high-load production applications that run on cost-effective infrastructure with high security and scalability. I usually get the simplest and…

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  32. 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…

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  33. 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 identifiable information (PII) is any data that can be used to identify a specific individual, such as name, email address, phone number, US Social Security number,…

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  34. Back in the days of DOS, software developers couldn't count much on fancy tools. There were no graphical interfaces, and everything was purely text-based. I remember using brief as an editor for my C source files (C++ didn't exist yet), and compiling the code from the command line with the…

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  35. 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 developers and integrate with other services. As more and more APIs are built and exposed to the internet, it is essential to secure them from unauthorized…

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  36. 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, as well as simulations and other experiences. The engine has been adopted by industries outside video gaming such as film, automotive, architecture, engineering, and construction.

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  37. 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 article, you will learn how to create a basic cross-platform application with Xamarin.Forms and use the WebAuthenticator class from Xamarin.Essentials together with Okta to quickly and…

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  38. .NET Core version 3.1 just came out as of writing this article. It includes a new version of Entity Framework (EF) Core, the next generation of Microsoft's tried and tested Object Relational Mapper (ORM). Entity Framework has been used alongside ASP.NET for years and has developed a reputation for being…

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  39. Document databases have become increasingly popular due to their speed and ability to store huge amounts of data or semi-structured data. MongoDB has emerged as a leader in the document database space and, as a consequence, it may be necessary for developers to learn how to interact with MongoDB from…

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  40. In the last article I wrote, I showed you how to host a serverless .NET application using AWS Lambda. In the article, we talked about the history of serverless and how companies are using these types of technology to simplify the process of delivering APIs and functionality faster than traditional…

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  41. ASP.NET Core is Microsoft's latest iteration of its web framework, which boasts many upgrades over the .Net Framework versions of ASP.NET. ASP.NET Core is cross-platform—meaning you can finally deploy your ASP.NET apps on Linux. It's open-source which is a massive departure from Microsoft's previous line of thinking. Most of the…

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  42. Serverless was only first coined as a concept 8 years ago in 2012 by Ken Fromm in The future of the world is serverless. Even with the rise of cloud computing, the world still revolves around servers. That won't last, though. Cloud apps are moving into a serverless world, and…

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  43. I've always thought developers are a pretty rare collection of individuals. We all vary in our composition; from the quiet introverts to the boisterous extroverts, from button-downed professionals to aloof loose cannons -- we run the full spectrum of human personalities. However, we are unique in that we share a…

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  44. We live in a world that moves fast. Compared to the mid 90s through early 2000s, we have incredibly intelligent technology. Effectively, we have super-computers in our pockets. Our actual, modern supercomputers would have seemed like works of fiction just two decades ago. Not only is our ability to compute…

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  45. If you have been doing .NET development professionally for any length of time, you are probably familiar with Entity Framework for data access. At the time of this post, both Entity Framework and Entity Framework Core have over 85 million downloads on Nuget so it is definitely a popular framework.

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  46. 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. What if there were a way to make all your new projects more secure out of the box, and also make your company's development processes easier…

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  47. 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…

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  48. MongoDB is a document database. Instead of storing data in tables and rows, you store documents in a structure very similar to objects in the memory of your application. The schema is flexible and dynamic. You don't need to define all fields upfront. Some MongoDB tutorials define model classes in…

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  49. It might seem obvious, but HTTP is a transfer protocol for hypertext. It was designed — in 1989 — to allow clients to request and receive hypertext documents from a server. While the protocol is undoubtedly a revolutionary technology, modern web applications have evolved far beyond simply responding to client…

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  50. On September 23rd, Microsoft announced the third major release of its .NET Core framework. This new release boasts better performance, support for Windows Desktop apps, improved support for Docker containers, and more. Naturally, I was excited to see this new release and get authentication hooked into it with Okta! I…

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  51. Entity Framework is one of the most pervasive Object-Relational Mappers (ORMs) for ASP.NET. An ORM maps an application's object entities to relational entities in a database, and allows developers to build and edit the database schema from the code. Furthermore, Entity Framework's design makes it particularly friendly for PostgreSQL developers.

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  52. 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 the Microsoft ecosystem, using Azure Functions has become a quick way to get back-end code up and running that is easy to understand and usable for…

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  53. 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…

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  54. Blockchain technology is already central to major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and its applications are ever growing. A blockchain is simply a list of records, called blocks. Each block contains information about transactions - and also confirms the validity of the previous block with something called a hash function. A hash…

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  55. So you're interested in using single sign-on (SSO) for your ASP.NET MVC apps? You've come to the right place. There are lots of reasons for using SSO for custom apps owned by the same organization. Better user experience. Less development time. Improved security. Those are all great reasons.

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  56. Do you ever wish you had a virtual scrap of paper you could use to write notes in the cloud? I'll show you how to build a simple ASP.NET Core app to keep track of your notes, plus how to use .NET Core's OAuth 2 authentication middleware to secure access…

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  57. Cosmos DB is a planet-scale database capable of holding billions of records ("documents" using Cosmos jargon) without significant detriment to performance. In this article, you will learn how to use Azure Cosmos DB - a key-value store solution - your ASP.NET app instead of a relational database.

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  58. There are two main steps in securing an application: authentication and authorization. Authentication is easy enough. A user enters a username and password (maybe even a second factor) to prove (authenticate) who they are. Authorization is a little less cut and dried. There are lots of factors that go into…

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  59. Developers have been lauded as being early adopters when it comes to technology products, but they seem to be late bloomers when it comes to dropping old habits. It took years of convincing and some guidance from Microsoft to get .NET developers to stop using Hungarian Notation in their programs,…

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  60. 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…

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  61. 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…

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  62. 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, simply extending their existing API by adding an endpoint for Alexa integration is the best way to manage that flow. For this example, you will use…

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  63. ASP.NET Core is entirely open source, free, has built-in DI and logging, works smoothly with a fantastic ORM and has tons of built-in features within Web API framework, and on top of that you get Microsoft support for free, maturity and flexibility of C# and ASP.NET, it's evident that ASP.NET…

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  64. There are a lot of things for .NET developers to love about TypeScript. It has strong typing that .NET Developers are used to and the ability to use the latest JavaScript features. Since it is just a superset of JavaScript, the cost to switch is almost nothing. Getting Visual Studio…

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  65. Microsoft recently released the preview of Visual Studio 2019 for Windows, and it's got lots of improvements and features! After reading the release notes, I reached out to Allison Buchholtz-Au and Kendra Havens on the Visual Studio team at Microsoft to get an idea of what features should be configured…

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  66. Do you need to build a REST API with ASP.NET Web API? If you're creating a new API, you should probably create it with .NET Core. But it's not always possible to use the latest and greatest technologies. If you're working in an existing ASP.NET 4.x app, or the organization…

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  67. Interested in building a secure ASP.NET MVC website that allows users to handle their own data with ease? Let's walk through creating a basic application that allows the creation, reading, updating, and deletion of data (CRUD) with Entity Framework by your users while managing them easily with Okta. For a…

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  68. Inevitably it happens. You go to one of those bars that has three trillion beers on tap, and you stare hopelessly at the wall of taps trying to decide what to order. Panic no more! Hop Roulette is here to save you from embarrassment when the bartender asks, "What'll it…

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  69. User authentication and authorization are common features in web applications, but building these mechanics has the potential to take a lot of time. Doing so requires setting up persistent storage for user information (in some type of database) and paying keen attention to potential security issues around sensitive operations like…

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  70. ASP.NET has been around for a long time. When Microsoft introduced ASP.NET MVC, it changed the way many developers approach their codebase. There is an excellent separation of concerns, a TDD friendly framework, and easy integration with JavaScript while maintaining full control over rendered HTML. On the client side, a…

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  71. These days, users of web application expect a personalized, secure experience. They want to make sure that they can easily get to their own information, and that no one else can access it. Developers of these web applications want a simple way to manage users and be assured that they…

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  72. The Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN) is a standard that defines the interface between a web application and a web server. Prior to this standard in .NET, there was a tight coupling between .NET applications and Internet Information Server (IIS), which led to great difficulties when trying to expand…

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  73. If you're a modern web dev, you're probably using JavaScript. Until recently, it was the only serious choice for more web development. For those of us who may not have JS as their primary language competency (but who are still interested in building web apps) that world is beginning to…

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  74. With the release of ASP.NET Core, there are several templates in the DotNet CLI. One of those templates is an Angular template that scaffolds a single page application built with Angular and ASP.NET Core. The problem with that template is that it scaffolds an Angular 4.2.5 project and Angular released…

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  75. These days it's prevalent to have a "back-end" and a "front-end" allowing two (or more) teams to work on a project. Microsoft's latest version of the ASP.NET Core framework is cross-platform and performant. Pairing it with the power and flexibility of Facebook's React framework makes it a pretty stable platform.…

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  76. One of the scariest features of Visual Studio is without a doubt right-click to publish. There are very few instances in which you'd actually want to make use of this "feature" and so many more in which it's a terrible idea. In this post I'll walk you through the right…

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  77. The authorization model in ASP.NET Core got a significant overhaul with the introduction of policy-based authorization. Authorization now uses requirements and handlers, which are decoupled from your controllers and loosely coupled to your data models. The result is a more modular, more testable authorization framework that fits into the modern…

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  78. A lot of applications today are built with an API on the backend, and then a single page application on the front end. This is a good approach because it allows you a ton of flexibility. For example, if you get a requirement to build a native mobile client later…

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  79. Token authentication has been a popular topic for the past few years, especially as mobile and JavaScript apps have continued to gain mindshare. Widespread adoption of token-based standards like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect have introduced even more developers to tokens, but the best practices aren't always clear.

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  80. Today's internet users expect a personalized experience. Developers must learn to develop websites that provide that personalized experience while keeping their user's information private. Modern web applications also tend to have a server-side API and a client-side user interface. it can be challenging to get make both ends aware of…

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  81. Xamarin is a cross-platform technology that makes it possible to build native applications for Android and iOS using a single, shared codebase. Like other technologies such as React Native and NativeScript, it allows development teams to spend less time writing code for both platforms.

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  82. Authorization is the oft-forgotten piece of identity and access management. The fact is, almost every app needs more than just "are they signed in?" for authorization. Most times, you need to not only know who "they" are, but what access they are supposed to have. For instance, "are they in…

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  83. In the age of the "personalized web experience", authentication and user management is a given, and it's easier than ever to tap into third-party authentication providers like Facebook, Twitter, and Google. And it's not just the wild, wild web that needs it. Businesses need ways to secure their APIs, and…

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  84. Every good dev knows that time spent setting up the perfect environment and searching out the latest tools is time well spent. Little things make a huge difference — upgrade your IDE plugins, automate a task or two, or look for new tools and libraries that can increase your efficiency.…

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  85. Microsoft developers have been using Visual Studio for their IDE since before .NET was even a thing. Visual Studio is twenty years old this year, and on March 7th, 2017 Microsoft released the latest version of its flagship developer product, Visual Studio. With this release are a bunch of new…

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  86. If you're wondering how to configure an ASP.NET application with KentorIT's AuthServices and Okta, you've come to the right place. But before delving into the specifics of how to make Okta work with an SAML-enabled ASP.NET application powered by KentorIT AuthServices, it is worth spending some time going over a…

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