Bit Armory Blog

The curious case of a Windows Explorer hang

2019-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve had my main development PC for about 7 years now and it’s still going strong. Sure, it’s old but holy-smokes think of it as a finely-tuned and well-oiled machine. Every setting on this machine has some kind of thought geared toward developer productivity. For example, emacs key-bindings for all windows in the Windows OS. You name it.

But I had this one nagging problem with Google Chrome: When I clicked on an HTML button to upload a file the USER32 “Open Dialog” box would come up. I would select the file to upload and soon as the “Open Dialog” box closed, Chrome would freeze for a good 10 to 15 seconds. Clicking anywhere in Chrome during this hang would produce a Windows OS “ding” sound for each click made anywhere on the browser.

The same issue would happen when I downloaded a small file. The USER32 “Save as…” dialog box would come up. I would select the folder to save the file. Soon as the save dialog box closed I would not be able to open the file for a good 10 to 15 seconds because Chrome would be non-responsive for that brief period of time.

The issue wasn’t 100% reproducible either; maybe 1 out of 8 times Chrome would lock up. The issue Drove. Me. Nuts. I’ve lived with this annoying bug for a very long time and it was time to put in some effort into tracking this issue down.

So, I started with the usual System Internals tools to try to track the issue down. At first, not much luck…

Process Explorer - I didn’t see any abnormal activity during the “hang” event in Chrome or any other system processes.
Process Monitor - Didn’t help much either. A few obscure registry accesses, but again, not much to go on.

Then, one day, I started DebugView which logs Kernel-mode DbgPrint calls. And by golly, right at the EXACT moment the freeze happened, the following output printed to DebugView:

[FFFFFA8041F3F3A0] WskProIRPGetAddrInfo is called.
[bind=FFFFFA803B923C10] Binding reference count++ = 2 (status = 00000000, impersonation= 2).
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] Request reference count++ = 3.
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] RPC method type = 1: rpc-method succeeded, queue to rpc-pending-list.
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] Request reference count-- = 2.
[FFFFFA803FBB2EE0] WskProIRPGetAddrInfo is called.
[bind=FFFFFA803B923C10] Binding reference count++ = 3 (status = 00000000, impersonation= 2).
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] Request reference count++ = 3.
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] RPC method type = 1: rpc-method succeeded, queue to rpc-pending-list.
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] Request reference count-- = 2.
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] WskKnrRpcComplete: rpc calls back for completion.
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] WskKnrCompletePending: complete pending request (rpc=1).
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] Request reference count-- = 1.
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] Request reference count-- = 0.
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] WskKnrCompleteRequest: rpc completion return status = 00000000 (reply=00000000).
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] WskProAPIGetAddressInfo returned addrinfo: [addr=FFFFF8A0366AC6C0].
[bind=FFFFFA803B923C10] Binding reference count-- = 2.
[FFFFFA8030B03EB0] WskKnrCompleteRequest: complete irp with IO status = 00000000.
[addr=FFFFF8A0366AC6C0] WskProAPIFreeAddressInfo freed addrinfo.
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] WskKnrRpcComplete: rpc calls back for completion.
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] WskKnrCompletePending: complete pending request (rpc=1).
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] Request reference count-- = 1.
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] Request reference count-- = 0.
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] WskKnrCompleteRequest: rpc completion return status = 00000000 (reply=c0000272).
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] WskProAPIGetAddressInfo returned addrinfo: [addr=0000000000000000].
[bind=FFFFFA803B923C10] Binding reference count-- = 1.
[FFFFFA8040AA4360] WskKnrCompleteRequest: complete irp with IO status = c0000272.
[FFFFFA8040C4CD80] WskProIRPGetAddrInfo is called.
[bind=FFFFFA803B923C10] Binding reference count++ = 2 (status = 00000000, impersonation= 2).
[FFFFFA8030C7B660] Request reference count++ = 3.
[FFFFFA8030C7B660] RPC method type = 1: rpc-method succeeded, queue to rpc-pending-list.
[FFFFFA8030C7B660] Request reference count-- = 2.

Very nice. Very very nice. The output is virtually the same every time the freeze occurs. But what does all this mean? Let’s try decoding it.

WskProIRPGetAddrInfo
- Wsk - probably relates to Winsock Kernel-mode network APIs.
- IRP - probably relates to processing a Windows I/O request packet.
  
  An IRP structure is a partially opaque structure that represents an I/O request packet.
  
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/ddi/content/wdm/ns-wdm-_irp
- GetAddrInfo - probably relates to getting network Address Infomation.
RPC method type = 1 - some kind of Remote Procedure Call (RPC).

Definitely getting a strong sense that the issue is something network related. Maybe a timeout of some kind.

After endless livekd kernel-debug sessions I finally opened WireShark on a low-traffic NIC and sure enough I found the culprit:

Turns out, every time I open a “Save as…” or “Open File” dialog box in Chrome my PC is sending NetBIOS broadcasts on all NIC interfaces. The NetBIOS names attempting to be resolved are related to Network Shortcuts in my Windows Explorer that I only use when my Virtual Private Network (VPN) is connected as shown in the picture below:

To remove Network Shortcuts, simply right-click the network shortcut you want to remove and click “Delete”. You can also delete Network Shortcuts stored in the following location:

C:\Users\ACCOUNT\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts

After I deleted the Network Shortcuts in Windows Explorer the momentary hangs in Google Chrome disappeared.

Case closed. :smile: :clap: :tada:

Setting up ProxyCap, Fiddler, and fixing SSL/TLS errors

2019-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

The following diagram shows a Fiddler proxy (MITM) approach for decrypting HTTPS traffic from a remote machine.

I installed ProxyCap on the remote machine to redirect HTTPS / SSL / TLS traffic through a Fiddler proxy on another machine.

For those unfamiliar, ProxyCap is a utility that allows users to define “proxy rules” on a per-application basis instead of setting a global machine-wide proxy on a computer.

The application I was trying to proxy through Fiddler displayed the following error:

The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.

Additionally, the Fiddler proxy machine would pop up an error dialog as shown below:

Session #2: The server (*) presented a certificate that did not validate, because it was issued to a different host.

SANs: …
SUBJECT: …

This warning can be disabled by clicking Tools > Fiddler Options.

The solution

In Fiddler, click Tools > Fiddler Options... and ensure Fiddler is setup to “allow remote computers to connect” as shown below:

Next, export the “root certificate” on the Fiddler proxy.

Copy the FiddlerRoot.cer to the remote machine. Right-click the FiddlerRoot.cer file on the remote machine and Install the certificate on the remote machine. Be sure to install the certificate into the “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” store as shown below:

Last but not least, on the remote machine, be sure to define proxy rules with “Resolve names remotely” checked in ProxyCap rules. This setting avoids IP and certificate mismatches.

And that’s all! Success!

Happy debugging,
Brian Chavez

How to disable Skype v8 Automatic Updates

2019-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

To disable Skype v8 updates. Simply browse to:

%AppData%\Microsoft\Skype for Desktop
Right-click, Skype-Setup.exe if present, and select Properties.
- If you don’t have this file, create a new text file named Skype-Setup.exe.
Once you have the property window open, select the Security tab.
In the Security tab, Edit… the permissions for your user account and others listed in the Groups or user names and deny Full control to the Skype-Setup.exe file.

After you complete the steps above, you should have a Security tab that looks similar to the following:

Then finally click Apply and OK to close the window. That’s it!

New Blog Migrated from SubText to Jekyll and hosted on GitLab

2019-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Finally migrated off SubText blog engine and migrated to a static generated Jekyll format hosted on GitLab Pages. Pretty sweet so far. I can finally decommission that noob-ish blog of mine. :sunglasses:

The main benefit of migrating to Jekyll is having the ability to write Markdown for my blog posts. I’m a big fan of Markdown; especially GitHub flavored Markdown.

I originally tried hosting the blog on GitHub Pages but found some limitations. For one, your repository must be public; not private for GitHub pages to work. I prefer to keep my blog source private for now; so the GitHub option was off the table.

Luckily, GitLab has a similar feature called GitLab Pages. GitLab Pages works just like GitHub Pages except you can keep your repo private.

Migrating from SubText wasn’t easy. The migration took several days. In general, the steps I took are as follows:

Export the SubText blog to BlogML/XML format. Make sure SubText is updated to the latest version before extracting your first export.
Next, I followed the instructions here for GitLab pages.
- I forked the https://gitlab.com/pages/jekyll example repo.
- Added minimal-mistakes gem gem to the fork by modifying the Gemfile.
- Configured _config.yaml.
Read the Blog ML/XML format and extracted the blog content to the fork’s _posts folder. The SubText/BlogML XML content is base64 encoded. After the base64 decoding, I then used Pandoc to convert the HTML into Markdown.
- @pcibraro’s BlogMLtoMarkdown provided a great start on the process.
- Extracted the comments from BlogML/XML and wrote them out as YAML files. Basically, I’ve followed the staticman YAML format.
- Extracted redirects from the old blog so I wouldn’t break permalinks. I had to add a jekyll redirect gem.
Modified the dark theme heavily.
Modified the code highlight heavily.
Added Google Tag Manager.
Added Google Analytics.
Added reCAPTCHA v3 - Invisible.
Create my own version of staticman in ASP.NET Core. Basically, the code processes blog comments and verifies the invisible reCAPTCHA tokens anytime someone leaves a comment.
- If the reCAPTCHA score of the comment is > .89, I don’t moderate the comment.
- If the score falls between 0.5 and 0.89, a pull-request is created for moderation.
- If the score falls below 0.5, the comment is rejected.

The motivations for writing my own self-hosted ASP.NET clone of staticman was:

The public server for staticman is API rate-limited by GitHub.
Doesn’t work with GitLab.
Requires exposing a REST endpoint with node.js.

For now, I’ve tentatively named my ASP.NET Core clone of staticman, ButlerBob. I’ll probably open-source it soon.

In the end, lots of work. Happy to be blogging again. :sunglasses:

List of Online Competitors Best Buy Price Matches

2018-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

As of 8/11/2018:

Video and Audio Center

Bill Smith Electronics

King’s Great Buys Plus

Nebraska Furniture Mart

New England Appliance

JSPM & third party library shims

2015-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

I was hitting a LOT of friction trying to get unregistered third-party packages to work with JSPM. “Frictionless browser package management” is the tag line, but only if you remain in the “jspm universe”.

In other words, if you try using a package that is not in the jspm registry, you’re going to eventually run into vague dependency related issues.

The example

Let’s suppose there’s a JavaScript library you want to use that’s not in the jspm registry. Let’s take https://github.com/corinis/jsForm for example. jsForm is a jQuery plugin that’s dependent on jQuery, but not registered or part of the jspm universe. You can manually install jsForm from JSPM via “jspm install github:cornis/jsForm” and jspm will be happy to do your bidding.

Unfortunately, if you try importing jsForm in a ES6 module like this:

import "corinis/jsForm";
 
@autoinject
export class Login {
    private auth:AuthManager;
    router:Router;
    providers: any[];
 
    email:string;

You might run the risk of having jsFrom loading in an incorrect order (where jsForm loads first, before jQuery is loaded). In order to overcome this problem you have two choices:

1. Manual Import

This step means modifying your initial SystemJS import statement like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
 
    System.import("jquery").then(function() {
        System.import("aurelia-bootstrapper");
    });
 
</script>

This ensures jQuery is loaded before everything else. This method feels like a hack and probably wont scale if we run into more dependency related issues. So looking for a better way …. we find

2. The ‘proper’ Shim Method

The proper way is to use a shim. Basically, what we have to do is write an override (aka shim) that “explicitly” defines the dependencies for our non-registered jsForm jspm package. We do that by writing something similar to:

{
   registry: 'jspm',
   main: 'js/jquery.jsForm',
   shim: {
    'js/jquery.jsForm': {
        deps: ['jquery']
     }
   },
   dependencies: { jquery: '*' }
}

And we’ll need to smash all this into a single line like so:

jspm install github:corinis/jsForm -o “{ registry: ‘jspm’, main: ‘js/jquery.jsForm’, shim: { ‘js/jquery.jsForm’: { deps: [‘jquery’] } }, dependencies: { jquery: ‘*’ } }”

Ugh. Yes, ugly. This is the friction I’m talking about. It’s not very friendly.

A little bit about the override schema:

main - path to the main JS file in your library to load. In our case “jspm_pacakges\github\corinis\jsForm@1.3.1\js\jquery.jsForm.js”. Notice this is a relative path from the extracted package (in bold).
shim: { ‘js/jquery.jsForm’ : { deps:[‘jquery’] } }</span> - our dependency, notice here we’re using the aliased name to “jquery” as defined in our config.js file.
dependencies: - any version of jquery will do.
registry: - wont work without it.

Now, if you execute the above JSPM command with the shim override, you’ll see config.js configuration changed and additional dependency listed for jsForm:

"github:corinis/jsForm@1.3.1": {
      "jquery": "github:components/jquery@2.1.4"
    },

Happy days. :)

HTH,
Brian Chavez

Enabling Decorators Support in TypeScript 1.5, Visual Studio 2015

2015-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Finally installed VS2015, I got the following error in my TypeScript project:

Error    TS1219    Experimental support for decorators is a feature that is subject
 to change in a future release. Specify '--experimentalDecorators' to remove this warning.

Ok. So, how exactly do you do this if you’re not the one invoking the TSC compile action? Visual Studio TypeScript plugin is invoking the compiler option. Hmm. tsconfig.json compiler config doens’t seem to be picked up by the TypeScript plug-in.

To enable decorator support, unload your TypeScript project. Right click, Edit Project .csproj. Find the TypeScript compiler option section and add the following (Line 14 and 15):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
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14
15
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<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
  <TypeScriptModuleKind>amd</TypeScriptModuleKind>
  <TypeScriptCompileOnSaveEnabled>True</TypeScriptCompileOnSaveEnabled>
  <TypeScriptTarget>ES5</TypeScriptTarget>
  <TypeScriptNoImplicitAny>False</TypeScriptNoImplicitAny>
  <TypeScriptRemoveComments>False</TypeScriptRemoveComments>
  <TypeScriptOutFile />
  <TypeScriptOutDir />
  <TypeScriptGeneratesDeclarations>False</TypeScriptGeneratesDeclarations>
  <TypeScriptNoEmitOnError>True</TypeScriptNoEmitOnError>
  <TypeScriptSourceMap>True</TypeScriptSourceMap>
  <TypeScriptMapRoot />
  <TypeScriptSourceRoot />
  <TypeScriptEmitDecoratorMetadata>True</TypeScriptEmitDecoratorMetadata>
  <TypeScriptExperimentalDecorators>True</TypeScriptExperimentalDecorators>
</PropertyGroup>

Also, seems like the TypeScript 1.5 RTM plugin will respect the decorator compile options when you use SAVE-ON-COMPILE. :)

Hope that helps,
Brian Chavez

ASP.NET Identity, OAuth 2 Social Login, Web API 2, and MVC 5 SPAs

2015-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

Wow, that’s a mouthful. I feel like that lady on the right sometimes.

So, I spent a few days studying SPA applications and how to use external social logins like Facebook and Google with Web API 2.

It’s not for the faint of heart, especially when Microsoft’s Web API template with VS 2013 is broken. Microsoft’s template implementation is about 70% right.

Pile on top, all the inconsistent Web API login routes to think about. See this post for what’s broken. I mostly agree to some extent. In addition, it seems like most “Web API” tutorials out there are outdated. Most of the tutorials have a user’s browser parsing an obscure “auth_token” somewhere along the OAuth login flow. Surprise! In MVC5 + WebAPI2 + Social Login, there is no auth token homie! Now, it’s all handled by the middleware. LoL. Eh, well, whatever, I didn’t want to expose a scary sensitive auth token to the user’s browser anyway. But I digress.

Before we begin, some articles & references that will help you

IETF’s RFC on OAuth 2 Spec: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6749#section-4.1
Great Stack Overflow Question on why Auth Tokens & Refresh Tokens
Using Web API 2 external logins with Facebook & Google.

Distilled down to a single blog post, I present to you, ASP.NET Identity’s OAuth2 Social Login flow with Web API 2:

So it begins, a new user arrives

Figure A:

Figure A, the user arrives and hits your MVC app. Your MVC app sends down your SPA. The user navigates to a login page and Figure B happens.

Figure B:

Your SPA app consumes the JSON from ExternalLogins call and renders some choices. In Figure B, Google and Facebook are configured on the server’s OWIN middleware. Cool.

Figure C:

The user decides to login with “Facebook”. In Figure C, it’s a full-page navigation to the URL of /ExternalLogin?provider=Facebook. Not an AJAX call.

AuthController.cs (originally AccountController.cs from the original template) sees this request, and processing goes up to a ChallengeResult:

// GET api/auth/ExternalLogin 
[OverrideAuthentication] 
[HostAuthentication(DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ExternalCookie)] 
[AllowAnonymous] 
[Route("ExternalLogin", Name = "ExternalLogin")] 
public async Task<IHttpActionResult> GetExternalLogin(string provider, string error = null) 
{ 
    if( error != null ) 
    { 
        return Redirect(Url.Content("~/") + "#error=" + Uri.EscapeDataString(error)); 
    } 

    //ANONYMOUS will always get trapped here. 
    if( !User.Identity.IsAuthenticated ) 
    { 
        return new ChallengeResult(provider, this); 
    }

A ChallengeResult is returned to the anonymous user. A ChallengeResult looks like:

public class ChallengeResult : IHttpActionResult 
{ 
    public ChallengeResult(string loginProvider, ApiController controller) 
    { 
        LoginProvider = loginProvider; 
        Request = controller.Request; 
    } 
    public string LoginProvider { get; set; } 
    public HttpRequestMessage Request { get; set; } 

    public Task<HttpResponseMessage> ExecuteAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken) 
    { 
        Request.GetOwinContext().Authentication.Challenge(LoginProvider); 
        var response = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized) 
        { 
            RequestMessage = Request 
        }; 
        return Task.FromResult(response); 
    } 
}

ChallengeResult has an HTTP Status Code of Unauthorized. When MVC is executing the ChallengeResult, MVC notifies the OWIN middleware of an Authentication.Challenge(“Facebook”). The unauthorized status code triggers the OWIN middleware to wake up and process the pending Authorization.Challenge, and transform the unauthorized status into a 302 redirect to an off-site login provider (Facebook in this case) for authorization as shown in Step 7 in Figure C above. Take note, in particular, the 302 redirect to Facebook has “redirect_uri=http://webapp.com/signin-facebook”. This is a callback into the middleware that the user’s browser will hit after they are finished authenticating and authorizing your web app on Facebook. In addition, take 2nd note, the middleware has instructed the browser to set a Correlation.Facebook cookie in Step 7 in Figure C above.

The user’s browser follows the redirect as shown in Figure D below:

Figure D:

In Figure D Step 8 above, the user authenticates with Facebook and authorizes WebApp.

Then, Figure D Step 9, Facebook issues a 302 redirect to the user’s browser back on the OWIN middleware endpoint /signin-facebook. The browser follows the redirect shown in Figure E Step 10 below:

Figure E:

Side Note: When the middleware receives the /signin-facebook callback, the middleware needs to check if the current callback originated from the WebApp to prevent a CSRF attack. The Facebook middleware inspects Correlation.Facebook cookie and matches the cookie with some encrypted state inside the callback that was part of the query string on the way out to Facebook and on the way back in from Facebook. Hewf. Stay with me now…

Next, the OWIN middleware uses the code query string to setup a backchannel with Facebook. The code=AQABC… from Figure E, Step 10, is a code to get a real access_token. The access token is then used to query Facebook’s Open Graph to get some claims about the user, like their Name, picture, email, etc … Step 11 and Step 12 in Figure E.

Finally, the OWIN middleware has enough information to create a ClaimsIdentity of an external login, and does so by granting an AuthenticationTicket associated with an ExternalCookie authentication type. The Facebook middleware packs all the claims from the Facebook backchannel into this cookie called .AspNet.ExternalCookie as shown in Step 13 in Figure E.

Lastly, the OWIN middleware redirects the user’s browser *back* into the MVC layer (remember our old URL that originally kicked off the process? /api/auth/ExternalLogin). Yep. I know. But, this time, we’re going to get past the original ChallengeResult because were coming back as an externally authenticated user with the help of [OverrideAuthentication]+ [HostAuthentication(ExternalCookie)], which sets up the User.Identity.IsAuthenticated to return true skipping the challenge as shown below:

// GET api/auth/ExternalLogin 
[OverrideAuthentication] 
[HostAuthentication(DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ExternalCookie)] 
[AllowAnonymous] 
[Route("ExternalLogin", Name = "ExternalLogin")] 
public async Task<IHttpActionResult> GetExternalLogin(string provider, string error = null) 
{ 
    if( error != null ) 
    { 
        return Redirect(Url.Content("~/") + "#error=" + Uri.EscapeDataString(error)); 
    } 

    //ANONYMOUS will always get trapped here. 
    if( !User.Identity.IsAuthenticated ) 
    { 
        return new ChallengeResult(provider, this); 
    } 

    var externalLogin = ExternalLoginData.FromIdentity(User.Identity as ClaimsIdentity); 

    if( externalLogin == null ) 
    { 
        return InternalServerError(); 
    } 

    if( externalLogin.LoginProvider != provider ) 
    { 
        Authentication.SignOut(DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ExternalCookie); 
        return new ChallengeResult(provider, this); 
    } 

    var user = await this.UserManager.FindAsync(new UserLoginInfo(externalLogin.LoginProvider, externalLogin.ProviderKey)); 

    var hasRegistered = user != null; 

    if( hasRegistered ) 
    { 
        Authentication.SignOut(DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ExternalCookie); 

        var oAuthIdentity = await this.UserManager.GenerateUserIdentityAsync(user, OAuthDefaults.AuthenticationType); 
        var cookieIdentity = await this.UserManager.GenerateUserIdentityAsync(user, CookieAuthenticationDefaults.AuthenticationType); 

        var properties = this.UserManager.CreateProperties(user); 

        Authentication.SignIn(properties, oAuthIdentity, cookieIdentity); 
        return Redirect(Url.Content("~/app#home")); 
    } 

    //so even if we get here, ANONYMOUS will never get this far. 
    //The browser has been authorized by an external provider. 
    //The next step is for the browser to call /RegisterExternal 
    //to register an account. We'll throw up an authorized splash to confirm. 

    return Redirect(Url.Content("~/app#/authorized")); 
}

This time, we hit the bottom of the /api/ExternalLogin call. This is the part where you can customize the login process. The OWIN middleware has already done the hard work for you. In the case where the user has never registered on WebApp, you have a small window of time to use the ExternalCookie login information for purposes of registration. We redirect the user’s browser to ~/app#/authorized, where we throw up a screen and ask for a username. The user clicks “Register” which then calls our Web API endpoint /api/auth/RegisterExternal.

// POST api/auth/RegisterExternal 
[OverrideAuthentication] 
[HostAuthentication(DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ExternalCookie)] 
[Route("RegisterExternal")] 
public async Task<IHttpActionResult> RegisterExternal(RegisterExternalBindingModel model) 
{ 
    if( !ModelState.IsValid ) 
    { 
        return BadRequest(ModelState); 
    } 

    var info = await Authentication.GetExternalLoginInfoAsync(); 
    if( info == null ) 
    { 
        return InternalServerError(); 
    } 

    var user = await this.UserManager.FindAsync(info.Login); 
     
    var hasRegistered = user != null; 
     
    if( hasRegistered ) 
    { 
        return BadRequest("External user already registered."); 
    } 

    user = new User() { UserName = model.Email, Email = model.Email }; 

    var result = await this.UserManager.CreateAsync(user); 
    if( !result.Succeeded ) 
    { 
        return GetErrorResult(result); 
    } 

    result = await this.UserManager.AddLoginAsync(user.Id, info.Login); 
    if( !result.Succeeded ) 
    { 
        return GetErrorResult(result); 
    } 
    return Ok(); 
}

And our user now has a local account.

Next blog post I’ll will show how to transform the ExternalCookie AuthenticationType into a local usable access_token for Token Barer Authentication for Web API during the life time of the SPA application.

HTH,
Brian Chavez

Newbies Guide to Aurelia and TypeScript

2015-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

So, after about 24 hours trying to understand and establish a workflow for a new JS framework called Aurelia and TypeScript, I think I’ve finally forged a path to use both in harmony in Visual Studio 2013.

First, some important concepts

Aurelia is written in ES6/ES7. Aurelia is distributed through jspm. The Aurelia distribution through jspm is ES5 code. Aurelia ES5 via jspm is runnable inside your browser.

If you plan on writing view models in TypeScrypt then all you need to be concerned about is transpiling your App.ts (*.ts) View Models into ES5 code.

Get the Tools

To get setup, you’re going to need:

NodeJS
Git

Be sure you can access git and npm from the command line before continuing.

Setup the Framework

Next, in a command prompt make sure you have the following installed:

npm install jspm -g
npm install tsd -g

At this point, you should go to your github account and create an access token for jspm because jspm will hit a lot of github repos when resolving dependencies. This means you can run up against an anonymous rate limit rather quickly. I did! Also, ensure the token you generate also has “public_repo” permission with it; otherwise you’ll run up against the same rate limit as an anonymous user and jspm requests will get 404s & projects not found. Do not skip this step.

Use the following command to configure jspm and github:

jspm registry config github

Create a working folder for your project, and:

tsd init
jspm install aurelia-framework
jspm install aurelia-bootstrapper

Copy all the *.d.ts type definitions inside “jspm_packages\github\aurelia” into a new folder “\typings\aurelia”.

Then run in the root of your project folder:

tsd rebundle

 >> added:  
     - aurelia/aurelia-binding.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-dependency-injection.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-event-aggregator.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-framework.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-history-browser.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-history.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-loader-default.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-loader.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-logging-console.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-logging.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-metadata.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-path.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-route-recognizer.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-router.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-task-queue.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-templating-binding.d.ts  
     - aurelia/aurelia-templating.d.ts

Your “typings\tsd.d.ts” file should have all the necessary references now. (TIP: Setup a gulp script to automate this process, You’ll need to re-do this every time you update Aurelia).

Almost there …

Get corejs.d.ts and es6.d.ts from this repo (or if using gulp/npm typescript: node_modules\typescript\bin\lib.es6.d.ts) and add both into “typings\”. You will need to reference these in your *.ts files.

At this point, you can create an empty MVC project inside your working folder at root level. Configure your routes and add a simple view with (no layout). Your .csproj file should be in the same directory with your proejct.json and config.js file.

If you’re using Visual Studio, make sure your TypeScript compiler “Module system” is set to AMD. Project > Properties > TypeScript Build: Module system

Create an app.ts file in the root project folder:

/// <reference path="typings/tsd.d.ts" /> 
/// <reference path="typings/es6.d.ts" /> 
/// <reference path="typings/core-js.d.ts" /> 

import {Router} from 'aurelia-router'; 

export class App { 
    constructor() { 
        this.message = "Hello World"; 
    } 

    message:string; 
} 

console.log("THIS APP RAN!");

SAVE. Your app.ts -> app.js should have AMD module layout.

Create an app.html view in the root project folder:

<template> 
     
    <h2>My App</h2> 
     
    <span>${message}</span> 

</template>

Save.

Create an index.cshtml file (Razor / No Shared Layout):

<!DOCTYPE html> 

<html> 
<head> 
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" /> 
    <script src="~/jspm_packages/system.js"></script> 
    <script src="~/config.js"></script> 
    <title></title> 
</head> 
<body aurelia-app> 
     
    <script> 
        System.import("aurelia-bootstrapper"); 
    </script> 
</body> 
</html>

SAVE.

Run the app, make a request for the application index and poof!

Much success. :)

PRO TIP: Going the extra mile to get decorators working with Dependency Injection

SEE UPDATE: Using TypeScript 1.5 RTM and VS2015

If you’re using Gulp, this is really easy, use a tsconfig.json and enable emitDecoratorMetadata CompilerOptions flag. If you’re using gulp-typescript pass a configure options object with emitDecoratorMetadata : true.

If you’re using Visual Studio 2013, unload your .csproj, and edit the configuration. Locate the following MSBuild props and add TypeScriptAdditionalFlags:

<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'"> 
    <TypeScriptModuleKind>amd</TypeScriptModuleKind> 
    <TypeScriptAdditionalFlags> $(TypeScriptAdditionalFlags) --emitDecoratorMetadata </TypeScriptAdditionalFlags> 
</PropertyGroup>

SAVE. Reload the project. Restart Visual Studio to make sure these changes really take effect. Hit the “Rebuild” on your project and you should now see your decorators working. How? You should see __metadata in the output:

Unfortunately, modifying your .csproj will only work with “MSBuild” invocations like “Build/Rebuild”. This will not work with compile-on-SAVE option inside VS. If you want a workflow of compile-on-SAVE, you’ll ultimately need to use gulp. I really tried hunting for the compiler options VS uses for compiling-on-SAVE but I couldn’t find the hook point. I suspect it’s somewhere deep inside Microsoft’s closed-source TypeScript plug-in for VS2013. TypeScriptAdditionalFlags is simply not picked up by the VS 2013 TypeScript plug-in. Hopefully, this changes in TypeScript 1.5 RTM.

If you decide to use gulp for compile-on-SAVE ensure you DISABLE compile-on-save inside Visual Studio your project options:

Otherwise, both gulp and VS will overwrite each other.

PRO TIP: Using jspm to use packages that are not “officially” in the global registry

Credits to @grofit for the tip:

jspm’s global register is rather limited compared to something like bower.io. For example, toastr isn’t inside the jspm registry, but you could do this:

jspm install github:CodeSeven/toastr
     Looking up github:CodeSeven/toastr 
     Updating registry cache... 
     Downloading github:CodeSeven/toastr@2.1.1 
ok   Installed CodeSeven/toastr as github:CodeSeven/toastr@^2.1.1 (2.1.1) 
ok   Install tree has no forks.

ok   Install complete.

PRO TIP: Understanding Aurelia Value Converters

See this: http://jdanyow.github.io/aurelia-converters-sample/. Really good tutorial on value converters.

PRO TIP: Using jQuery Plugins with Aurelia

PRO TIP: Don’t use SystemJS to load CSS

Use SystemJS for importing JavaScript that is compatible with jspm and bundled for jspm**... using SystemJS’s CSS plug-in to load CSS will get you in a world of mess. Basically, don’t use **import “bootstrap.css!“ in your ES6 modules. The reason for this is the ES6/SystemJS loader standard was recently changed so CSS ordering is not guaranteed. If you need to load CSS resources in some specified order, use Aurelia’s <require from=”…”> to load your CSS resources.

If you installed JavaScript libraries manually using “jspm github:user/somerepo” (that isn’t part of jspm’s universe nor jspm aware) there’s a good chance that jspm wont setup dependencies (ie: jQuery) required by “user/somerepo”. Your third-party library can be loaded out of order relative to its dependency (for the exact reason above) because JSPM doesn’t know the package’s dependencies by default if they are not specified. See this blog post for more info: How to deal with dependencies with non-registry JSPM packages

PRO TIP: Careful of camelCase names in View Models

Has to do with hyphenations and DOM elements:

http://aurelia.io/docs.html#custom-attributes

* Since it’s a dom attribute it’s not valid html so Aurelia will automatically hyphenate and try match an attribute.

* Simply put when you have a name that camel case you need to separate it with -

Have fun :)

Brian Chavez

Date Recurrence Library for .NET/C#

2015-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

It’s quite unfortunate stackoverflow is closing down questions like this:

Recurrence Library for date calculations for .Net [closed]

Actually, I wish they changed this policy since the field of “what’s best” is constantly changing. Normally, I’d contribute to the question and others would vote on that suggestion. The best answer usually bubbles up to the top and *that* is useful. New libraries are created all the time.

Anyway, for those of you looking for a date recurrence library, I’d like to recommend:

EWSoftware PDI Library and NuGet Here

There are others, but I’ve used this before and works really well. The main class you’ll need to work with is the Recurrence in the EWSoftware.PDI name space. For example:

[Test] 
public void test() 
{ 
    var r = new Recurrence(); 
    r.RecurDaily(2); 

    var starting = DateTime.Today; 
    var ending = DateTime.Today.AddDays(7); 

    var dates = r.InstancesBetween(starting, ending); 
    foreach( var occurrence in dates ) 
    { 
        Console.WriteLine(occurrence); 
    } 
}

OUTPUT:

5/25/2015 12:00:00 AM  
5/27/2015 12:00:00 AM  
5/29/2015 12:00:00 AM  
5/31/2015 12:00:00 AM

Also, if you find it useful, consider making a donation to him. I actually bought a license to his PDI library way back when before he open-sourced it. He’s also the author of the VS2013 spell checker plug-in. Legit.