Serving Your Contracts Over HTTP
Pactify.AspNetCore in one sitting: an attribute, an assembly scan, and a /pacts/{provider} endpoint that serves your contract classes as live JSON - plus what a runtime contracts endpoint is really for.
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Replaying the Contract Against a Real API
The provider side of Pactify - how CreateFor<Startup> hosts your whole API in memory with TestServer, why interactions verify concurrently, the SmartFormat trick behind endpoint templating, and the discovery that Given(...) never runs.
The Endpoint That Pretends to Be a Result
Every FastEndpoints route is mapped as a Minimal API whose handler returns the same singleton IResult - and that one weird trick is the door into the whole per-request pipeline. Part 3 of FastEndpoints in Depth.
Resolving the Tenant on Every Request
Header, route, subdomain or query string: how the platform decides who is asking before it touches any data, how tenant identity becomes a connection string and a schema, and where the caching knives are hidden.
Where JavaScript Goes Without a Module System
A 40-line entry script that is entirely commented out, thirty-one views carrying inline script blocks, a 2,904-line page file, and @section as the only architecture - the addendum's closing ledger.
CSS by Accretion
A sequel stylesheet four times the size of the original, a sheet per screen, six copied tour themes, and a modal built as one inline HTML string - what a naming convention and a tokens file actually earn.
Validation Theatre
The platform bundled a client-side validation framework - one file of it twice - and wired none of it, hand-stitching every real check inside modal callbacks with manual error classes and keyup character counters.
The Six-Megabyte File Called min.js
A 6.23 MB JavaScript bundle loaded on every page, a manifest that minifies CSS but concatenates JS, and two copies of jQuery - the first of four frontend chapters the attendance series skipped.
What a Hand-Rolled Intranet App Taught Me
The honest retrospective - copy-paste as a pattern, zero tests, PII in telemetry and what employee-monitoring data demands, destructive error handling, and the handful of decisions that genuinely earned their keep.
The Dependency Graveyard
AutoMapper referenced and never mapped, a ghost OpenXml import, a full-framework MVC5 reference in a Core app, Hangfire packages with no jobs, unconfigured Serilog sinks, and an unregistered middleware - what unused packages cost even when nothing calls them.
Two Key Vault SDKs, One Password in Plain Sight
One class bridging the legacy ADAL KeyVaultClient and the modern SecretClient, three coexisting secret postures - managed identity, a service-principal password in config, a committed key file - and a migration frozen mid-flight.
Email Templates Live in the Database
HTML templates seeded in OnModelCreating, a reflection mini-language that resolves hash-brace tokens against a model, a Gmail-versus-SMTP environment branch, Cc quietly added into To, and string.Format run over raw HTML.
A Timer You Can Stop from an Email
A work-from-home swipe modelled as a state machine, a stop-from-email deep link, the estate's one deliberate IDOR guard that compares instead of overwrites, and a DbContext constructed by hand inside the action.
Sticky Sessions, Wrong Cache
In-memory session behind three App Service instances with affinity disabled, two distributed caches configured at once, a 1000-second easy-testing timeout, and a Redis expiry that throws every December.
Every Intranet App Ends Up Exporting Excel
EPPlus export by reflection, attribute-ordered columns, six near-identical branches, a ten-byte corrupt-file catch, a ghost OpenXml reference, formula injection, and the licence change that caught a lot of teams off guard.
A Report Builder Users Drag and Drop
Templates, columns, filters and group-bys stored in tables, a fluent WHERE/HAVING/ORDER builder that parameterises values but concatenates identifiers - self-service BI, second-order injection, and a handful of copy-paste bugs.
The Multi-Result-Set Dream EF Core Wouldn't Grant
An entire stored-procedure framework built on an EF6 extension library, shipped inside an EF Core app, in a folder named Future - the anatomy of an abandoned migration and how to recognise one.
Three Ways to Call a Stored Procedure
Reflection that builds EXEC statements, a table-valued function called by string interpolation, and a raw ADO.NET runner returning lists of lists - one codebase, three coexisting answers to the same question.
A DB-First Model in Code-First Clothing
A decimal surrogate key beside the natural key that does the work, scaffolded index cruft with a placeholder name, a DbSet of List of string, and lazy proxies in a projection minefield.
Resurrecting Html.Action in ASP.NET Core
MVC5 child actions were removed from ASP.NET Core, so this codebase re-implemented them - an ActionContext conjured mid-request, a MemoryStream response swap, and a .Result at the heart of 118 call sites.
Compiling Authorization Out of Debug Builds
Every controller wrapped its Authorize attribute in
Logging In with CAS When Everyone Uses OAuth
A 2004-vintage SSO protocol wired into ASP.NET Core - ticket validation, roles derived from the database at login time, and single sign-out through a WordPress front door.
An Attendance Platform in ASP.NET Core
Badge gates, WFH timers and shift allowances - the shape of a seven-project intranet attendance platform, the onion it almost is, and the roadmap for fourteen more parts.