While only a few countries use absurd date formats (such as the Month-first approach adopted by some former European colonies), there's no shortage of different date formats out there. Source: John Harding/Mona Chalabi

Experiment: DateTime formats

Okay. So I needed to figure out what locales certain machine supported, and what kind of DateTime formats those would produce. Being the crafty coder I am, I set out to copy-paste some readymade code from docs.microsoft.com. As a side note, after Microsoft opened the docs out to community contributions, I have had far less need to browse StackOverflow for my carefully curated code snippets of questionable quality. I’m going to regard that as a minor victory on the path to friendlier developer communities. Preface…Continue reading Experiment: DateTime formats

How to fix a build configuration that’s not available as a build directive in Visual Studio?

This article describes how to fix and tweak your pre-build directives in Visual Studio – just in case they refuse to properly work. Because yeah, apparently that sometimes just randomly happens. But fear not – there’s a stupid and ugly, but definitely thoughtful workaround available! Also, sorry for a confusing title. I’m taking suggestions for a more descriptive one! Anyway – on to the topic of the day! Problem So you’re either trying to get a new build configuration to be visible in the dropdown…Continue reading How to fix a build configuration that’s not available as a build directive in Visual Studio?

Fixing “No database provider has been configured for this DbContext” in Entity Framework Core

I’m using Entity Framework in most projects I’m working on – and for the most part, it’s a pleasure to work with. But as always, there are plenty of chances to run into issues – so obviously, I stumble into all of the rare stuff that IS broken! This one I hadn’t really seen before – “No database provider has been configured for this DbContext”. This time I encountered the issue while setting up a new project and getting started working on the model. EF…Continue reading Fixing “No database provider has been configured for this DbContext” in Entity Framework Core

How to fix “Missing value for AzureWebJobsStorage in local.settings.json” when you’re debugging Azure Functions locally?

Another day, another issue with Azure Functions! For such simple and powerful tool, it sure does produce a lot of topics for blog articles! 😁 So let’s get down to fixing another Azure Functions configuration issue. But wait – what WAS the problem again? Problem When firing up your Azure Functions project locally, this error is what you’re confronted with: “Missing value for AzureWebJobsStorage in local.settings.json. This is required for all triggers other than httptrigger, kafkatrigger. You can run ‘func azure functionapp fetch-app-settings ‘ or…Continue reading How to fix “Missing value for AzureWebJobsStorage in local.settings.json” when you’re debugging Azure Functions locally?

An accurate depiction of a NuGet package factory

Azure DevOps Pipelines Caching

Azure DevOps pipelines have a pretty handy feature called Pipeline Caching. It’ll help you avoid annoyingly long NuGet package restores in your builds. And that makes sense – why would you restore packages again and again and again, if you’re not updating your dependencies meanwhile? And especially in case of CI or CD pipeline, you’ll end up having a pipeline running constantly without packages actually getting bumped up – so your NuGet task is downloading the same packages over and over again. That’s when Pipeline…Continue reading Azure DevOps Pipelines Caching

How to fix “System.IO.FileSystem: Could not find a part of the path \AppData\Local\AzureFunctionsTools\Releases\3.17.0\workers. Value cannot be null. (Parameter ‘provider’)” when running Azure Functions locally?

Well, that title is a mouthful. But it’s the topic for today, so what can you do? That said, this article should be pretty topical, as the issue started popping up only a few days ago. Chances are it’ll be patched soon enough, but in the meantime, it’s always useful to document the fix! Problem When running or debugging Azure Functions locally, your runtime just blurts our this error and fails to compile your functions: [2021-01-11T10:28:11.495Z] A host error has occurred during startup operation ‘0d00defa-b8bd-4fb8-9794-b0e5950a4c38’.…Continue reading How to fix “System.IO.FileSystem: Could not find a part of the path \AppData\Local\AzureFunctionsTools\Releases\3.17.0\workers. Value cannot be null. (Parameter ‘provider’)” when running Azure Functions locally?

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

How to nuke the Identity Cache in Visual Studio?

This article explains one easy workaround to a lot of Visual Studio authentication issues. Personally, it’s helped me multiple times when Cloud Explorer has gotten into a weird authentication loop or Visual Studio stops seeing my MSDN subscription. And it also helps you clean up any old and unused credentials – such as the ones you only used once in 2018 to log into a customer’s Azure environment to debug an issue they had with their AppInsights extension on an app service (and that ended…Continue reading How to nuke the Identity Cache in Visual Studio?

What in tarnation (and tarnation accessories)

Fixing unexpected Microsoft.AspNetCore package errors after a dependency update

This was a fun one! Suddenly, while running or debugging my ASP.NET Core 3.1 application, I started getting errors about missing assemblies, along the lines of “FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.Forms“. These DLL files were not required a minute earlier – nor did requiring them really make much sense in my mind – but there was a nonsensical, easy fix, so in the end it was all good! But let’s go through this thing in order. What was the problem now? Problem…Continue reading Fixing unexpected Microsoft.AspNetCore package errors after a dependency update

Microsoft Graph g-raph (giraffe) - the spirit animal of Microsoft Graph

Graph API throws “$count is not currently supported.” when you KNOW it’s supported?

Hey, another funny case. “Funny” as in “the error message is misleading and googling didn’t really help”, but also as in “a colleague knew the answer right off the bat because he already fixed it in another project”. This time the documentation was in fact there, it just wasn’t there to be found. Anyway – what have I broken this time? Problem When you’re calling Graph API with both $filter and $count, for example like this: Instead of the expected number of found items, you…Continue reading Graph API throws “$count is not currently supported.” when you KNOW it’s supported?

“An assembly specified in the application dependencies manifest was not found” when running Add-Migration in Entity Framework Core?

Another quick one – I’m sure this doesn’t apply to all cases, but I’m still logging it in case someone (like myself) stumbles upon the issue and finds help here. I was building a solution with some Azure Functions fetching and populating data in a database, and was planning on building an UI for browsing the data at some point later on – but I actually got stuck on the second step already :) While adding the database to my project, while running Add-Migration in…Continue reading “An assembly specified in the application dependencies manifest was not found” when running Add-Migration in Entity Framework Core?

Pulumi task on Azure DevOps fails with error “azureblob.OpenBucket: accountName is required”

This article explains how to fix one of the many issues you might face when configuring Pulumi deployments for your Azure DevOps Pipelines! The particular error you may run into was “azureblob.OpenBucket: accountName is required” – what a descriptive one, when there’s no accountName to be specified anywhere! But first – let’s get through the basics. Namely… “Pulumi?”, you ask – “What’s that?” Well, let me give you a 1-line response to that. One very long line, that is. But what was the error I…Continue reading Pulumi task on Azure DevOps fails with error “azureblob.OpenBucket: accountName is required”

Say "Dependency Injection" one more time I DARE YOU

How to inject EF Core DbContext in an Azure Function?

Ah, one more on the related topics of different configurations for your Azure Function apps. In this article, I’ll describe how you can configure the Entity Framework Core database context to be injected into your Azure Functions App. In my experience, this is a very typical and often-needed model to structure your Azure Functions. Therefore, while tooling and templates aren’t quite there, it’s worthwhile to document how to do this somewhere – well, here. Solution I’ve posted before about how to instantiate a database context…Continue reading How to inject EF Core DbContext in an Azure Function?

“Conversion overflow” when reading numeric data from MS SQL database using Entity Framework

This article explains how to fix a weird situation where your .NET application utilizing Entity Framework or Entity Framework Core simply crashes without any way to recover or catch the Exception. You only get errors somewhere along the lines of “conversion overflow”. Ah – what a fun little issue! Problem So when you’re trying to instantiate an entity with a property of type decimal, you’ll get one of the 2 following exceptions with varying Call Stacks: Conversion overflow or: Arithmetic overflow error converting numeric to data type numeric…Continue reading “Conversion overflow” when reading numeric data from MS SQL database using Entity Framework

How to configure Azure Function’s startup?

Azure Functions use dependency injection, and that allows us to define all kinds of prebuilt or custom-built services as being available for our functions really easily. This is a really easy way to initialize scoped resources to be used in your different functions… But how do you actually configure them in an Azure Functions App? Problem Okay, a step back – there’s a bit of a problem that we need to resolve before we can proceed with the configuration. When you create a new Azure…Continue reading How to configure Azure Function’s startup?

How to list your git stashes?

Long story short, yes, I really had to google this, and since top results seemed to give pretty unclear (or even wrong) answers, I decided to document it for myself. Maybe it’ll be helpful to someone else too! And just to state the obvious: I’m using GitHub Desktop for most of my mandatory Git stuff, but for whenever I have to run any git commands, I run Windows PowerShell (git exe is added to PATH variable). Solution Well, it’s actually very, VERY simple. You can…Continue reading How to list your git stashes?

SharePoint is not broken - it just does't work

(Literally) Breaking: Changes to app authentication on SharePoint! 😵

This article explains how to get rid of sudden and unexplainable 401 Access Denied errors when trying to authenticate against a fairly fresh Microsoft 365 / SharePoint Online tenant. This issue seems to be caused by a long-ish project to finally retire ACS – Azure Access Control service) on SharePoint (it’s retired everywhere else already!) Note: This is an updating story, as the situation with ACS is definitely… Developing. Yeah, let’s call it that. It’s a developing situation. Problem In the beginning of September (2020),…Continue reading (Literally) Breaking: Changes to app authentication on SharePoint! 😵

How to fix “AADSTS50011 – The resource principal named was not found in the tenant”

Another day, another variant of AADSTS50011! With a lot of apps and web services using Azure Active Directory for authentication, you’re bound to run into issues, right? Ah well, one would hope to avoid them. But at least this one is usually easy to fix! Problem I’ve encountered 2 different variants of this particular issue – the error message may or may not contain the name of the principal it’s looking for, and the guid of the tenant it’s looking for the principal in. AADSTS500011…Continue reading How to fix “AADSTS50011 – The resource principal named was not found in the tenant”

MSDN-related queries in my Google Search Console data. There's quite a few...

The all-important MSDN Subscriber links

This article serves as a simple glossary of important MSDN Subscriber links that I always forget – links that Microsoft keeps updating, that is! I’ll be updating the post as need be :) And yes, I do feel a little bit ridiculous about creating an actual article about something as simple as a list of links to stuff that should be easily discoverable by any search engine. But I suppose it is what it is. Anyway, it seems to me like any time I need…Continue reading The all-important MSDN Subscriber links

How to restore lost windows in Visual Studio?

This article explains how to restore any hidden windows in Visual Studio without resetting your whole window layout, by using a common keyboard shortcut. Problem We’ve all been there – you’re opening a new window in Visual Studio, but your keyboard shortcut or clicking the item in the menu simply seems to do nothing. The window doesn’t show up anywhere. Reason The reason for this (most of the time) is simple: you have the window popped-up and located outside your screen. This happens pretty much…Continue reading How to restore lost windows in Visual Studio?

How to resolve “Microsoft.Data.SqlClient is not supported on this platform.” in an Azure Function App?

Hah – another interesting one. This article describes how to resolve an error along the lines of “Microsoft.Data.SqlClient: Microsoft.Data.SqlClient is not supported on this platform.“, thrown by Azure Functions host. Apparently you can run into this issue either on your local development machine or even in Azure. Problem For me, this error popped up after some house cleaning tasks – dependency updates, merging feature branches… You know the stuff. And suddenly, while the Azure Function App would build and run just fine, my SQL calls…Continue reading How to resolve “Microsoft.Data.SqlClient is not supported on this platform.” in an Azure Function App?

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Solutions are worthless unless shared! Antti K. Koskela's Personal Professional Blog

Category: DevTips