Super Simple GraphQL Tutorial with C#
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 access. In this tutorial, you will learn how to build an ASP.NET Core 3.1 Web API using GraphQL and secure it with Okta. ASP.NET Core...
Identity Security for Games in C# with Unity
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. Identity security is a key concept that is mostly missing in Unity. In fact, most engines today do not provide solutions for securing identity, authenticating users,...
How to Use CSS Grid to Build a Responsive React App
Do you remember the days when people used tables to arrange content on websites? HTML tables were ideal for arranging content in a grid-style layout. But they had a serious problem. They mixed content with style, prohibited semantic markup, and made it hard for screen readers to sort the information in a meaningful way. After dropping the use of tables, the first solution was to use the CSS float to position elements on a web...
Build a Secure Micronaut and Angular App with JHipster
Micronaut is a new framework for developing JVM applications, including APIs and microservices. It uses ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation to compute the information that your application needs before runtime, removing the need for reflection. The result is a significant decrease in runtime overhead and startup time, and a substantial increase in application throughput. Micronaut is a direct competitor to Spring Boot from the folks that invented Grails. Its design and runtime efficiency make it ideal for...
OAuth 2.0 Patterns with Spring Cloud Gateway
Spring Cloud Gateway is the Reactive API Gateway of the Spring Ecosystem, built on Spring Boot, WebFlux, and Project Reactor. Its job is to proxy and route requests to services and to provide cross-cutting concerns such as security, monitoring, and resilience. As Reactive models gain popularity, there is a chance that your microservices architecture becomes a mix of Spring MVC blocking applications and Spring WebFlux non-blocking applications. In this tutorial, you will use Spring Cloud...
JWT vs Opaque Access Tokens: Use Both With Spring Boot
The topic of validating an OAuth 2.0 access tokens comes up frequently on this blog. Often we talk about how to validate JSON Web Token (JWT) based access tokens; however, this is NOT part of the OAuth 2.0 specification. JWTs are so commonly used that Spring Security supported them before adding support for remotely validating tokens (which is part of the OAuth 2.0 specification.) In this post, you will build a simple application that takes...
Arm Up Your Java: Performance Benchmarks
Arm processors have been in the news lately, and it’s causing confusion and worries about processor performance for some folks. After Apple announced its plan to switch to Arm-based processors, I heard people (incorrectly!) speculating the performance would be similar to a Raspberry Pi. Java on Arm is nothing new, but we are seeing increased Arm investment from cloud vendors. Amazon recently updated its Arm offerings, and Microsoft is working on porting the JVM to...
Announcing the New Okta Developer Certification
Over the past few months, I have been working on a side project that I am really excited about. If you know me well, you probably know I enjoy using my side projects to help other teams meet their goals (and if you don’t, I am a Senior Security H@X0R at Okta. Check out my blog posts here.) So, when the Okta certification team asked me to help them build a cool developer certification experience,...
Easy Xamarin Essentials with Web Authenticator
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 easily add user login to your mobile app. To continue you will need: A basic knowledge of C# Visual Studio 2019 An Okta Developer Account...
Build Awesome APIs with Entity Framework Core
.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 an essential tool in any developer’s toolbox for .NET Framework, and now .NET Core. .NET Core now also includes a built-in dependency injection system and...