Developer's Cheat Sheet for C# 9.0
Introduction to C# 9 (and a bit of C# 8, too) Let’s start with a background on how C# 9 got here (implementation examples start in the next section). The last few years in computer science, we’ve observed the rising popularity of the #FreeLunchOver concept. The idea is that CPU technology, based on electrical signals and Von Neumann architecture, has reached its intrinsic limits. As long as integrated circuits were slower than light, we knew...
Build a Secure GraphQL API with MicroProfile
MicroProfile is an open-source community project with the goal to encourage the development of Java microservice solutions. It was created in 2016 in response to the changing needs of modern web development. In particular, it seeks to foster the development of smaller, less monolithic services (microservices) that can run on faster release cycles than the typical, old-school Enterprise Java application. Shortly after its creation, it joined the Eclipse foundation. MicroProfile, in essence, is a set...
Easily Consume a GraphQL API from React with Apollo
GraphQL is an incredibly powerful query language for APIs that helps improve performance and extensibility in your APIs. The query language is designed to allow developers to query exactly the data they need. As your API grows in size and scope, current consumers are unaffected by changes since their queries should return the same data. Apollo Client is a state management library for JavaScript. It fits seamlessly into React applications and can handle fetching, caching,...
Android Login Made Easy with OIDC
Having a dedicated part of a mobile app for authorized users is a must for a modern-day app. Users want to have a personalized experience with the apps they love. They expect to seamlessly use services on different devices and platforms. And, most of all, they want to be sure that their personal data is secure. Implementing a secure login process on Android can be challenging to achieve since many different moving parts need to...
Offline JWT Validation with Go
Modern authentication systems use and generate JSON Web Tokens (JWT). There are many different ways that JWTs are used but, in this post, we will concentrate on JWTs that are used as OIDC access tokens. When a user successfully logs in to an application using a service like Okta, an OIDC access token is generated in the form of a JWT. That token can be passed in requests to the backend. The backend can then...
How to Write Secure SQL Common Table Expressions
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 to perform difficult operations in two distinct steps that make the challenge easier to solve. In this article, you will learn how to write common...
How to Docker with Spring Boot
Those of you reading this have certainly heard of Docker. After years of hype, it has become the somewhat standard technology for everyday DevOps operations. It greatly helped to simplify deployments and testing by creating efficient, immutable images of the applications which are working in their own silo. More efficient placement of applications has made this technology central for cloud applications which is why it has gotten so much attention in recent years. Docker has...
One Identity Across Salesforce.com and Mulesoft
Today, I’m going to show you how to plug Okta into a Force.com application (along with Mulesoft’s API gateway) using the OpenID Connect protocol (aka ‘OIDC’). By the end of this tutorial, your Force.com application will have user authentication backed by Okta and will be able to securely call your backend APIs through Mulesoft’s API gateway. Sound good? Let’s get to it! What’s Force.com? Force.com is Salesforce’s Platform-as-a-Service (aka ‘PaaS’) which allows you to develop...
A Beginner's Guide to JWTs
JSON Web Tokens (JWT) are used everywhere (even places they shouldn’t be). This post will cover the basics of what you need to know about JWT and the related specifications in the Javascript Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) family. JWT is pronounced "jot". Table of Contents What is a JWT? How JWTs Are Used JWT Structure JWT Claims JWT Header JWT Signature Problems with JWTs Learn More About JWT What is a JWT? A JWT...
How to Use WebAuthn in C#
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 and more than 600 million passwords. With 62% of users reusing passwords, a successful attack on one of the websites gives the attacker access to...