Wasting Time
Ale, music and enjoying life.
OData – Create Entity with Child Entities Response with Expand.
The Issue
When creating an entity (with child entities) using POST with OData the response will only show the main Entity created. Child entities are ignored.
The Solution
Use Expand on POST. What?! Seems a bit strange I’m sure but decorating your POST action with [EnableQuery] and wrapping the response in an OData SingleResult will adhear to the OData Expand on POST.
return Ok(SingleResult.Create(result));
The only issue with this is that you have to hit the DB with an Includes to get the fully formed newly created Entity plus child objects. So the result variable above will be assigned similar to below…..
var result = dbContext.ParentEntity.Include(“NameOfChildEntity”).Where(p => p.Id == myDbParentEntity.Id);
Azure API Management – Caching
Overview
Carried out a discovery phase recently to look at Azure API Management and the key features gained by layering Azure’s API Manager (APIM) as a proxy/facade layer between your backend APIs. One of the elements of APIM that rather appealed to me was the “out of the box” caching.
APIM Caching – The Easy Way
Playing with an POC API and one Operation I was quickly up and running with caching by simply defining a Policy to my API operation.
The MSDN documentation here is easy to follow, along with the implementation. For an API operation that’s unlikely to change it’s just a case of adding an Inbound policy to carry out a cache lookup and a outbound query to store the backend API response.
The additional attributes basically form the cache key. So, if you want to cache based on the subscription key or the product for example that can be achieved by specifying true on the attributes you care about. Things get a little tricky when trying to invalidate the cache. In fact there doesn’t appear to be an easy way (or any way?!) to invalidate the cache. This doesn’t really give me the flexibility I need. So onto…….
APIM Caching – The Hard Way
Well it’s not really that hard but there’s not much documentation currently available on this approach. Even searches on StackOverflow result in empty responses and/or people complaining that Microsoft haven’t really made things easy here.
After a bit of trial and error I managed to get something like what I’d need. Basically, I used an approach of capturing the backend APIs response to a variable, storing this in the cache by a deterministic key and checking for this on Inbound requests then finally using some of the XSLT logic to either use the cached response in body of the response or call out to backend API for a fresh response.
Finally, I could then remove the cache key (and invalidate the cache) on POST, PATCH etc….
<cache-remove-value key=”getAllWidgets” />
Azure .Net Core App Service fails to start 503 error
Was playing with a POC app recently. I pushed out a web deploy to an Azure App Service. Everything built and deployed without issue. The app fired up and nothing just the vanilla error message returned. I checked the site logs via Kudu and nothing jumped out. Tried another deploy and no dice. So where do we go from here?
Enable stdout
As I was in Kudu I navigated to the apps web.config and edited it to enable stdoutlogs.
I refreshed the site a couple of times to generate some log activity then opened the log file and realised that the SQL DB the app was talking to wasn’t enabled for Azure services. A quick SQL config and all was good.
Other causes of this error:
- Badly formed appsettings.json file
- New key value in appsettings.json without a corresponding app setting in Azure.
Royal Mere Aldemar Hotel, Hersonosis, Crete
Relaxing!
Spent a week at the Royal Mere hotel near Hersonosis in Crete with my mother. This was my 3rd time in Crete having being previously there to different parts of the island on a family holiday in the 80s and with my wife in 2011.
I’d visited a TUI 5 star resort before being at 1 in Croatia last year and was impressed with the food (good veggie options) and accommodation. The Royal Mere was a similar deal, no complaints really.
Leaving a typical wet dark and gloomy Manchester 
Seemed to be following this plane across Germany 
The hotel lobby 
View of the main hotel pool from the rooftop bar 
Same view but at sunset 
Hotel gym. Went once! 
When in Greece. Ouzo! 
Enjoying one of many Whiskey Sours in the hotel’s rooftop bar 
Many things I like about this menu 
“Big Ben” 
“Big Ben” at night from my room 
How did this get in here?
Pasty Brit abroad.
Hotel’s Rooftop bar 
Hotel’s entertainment 
Pool night at the hotel 
One of the hotel’s restaurants. Asian cuisine. Only 1 veg option mind 
My mother’s balcony 
Hotel’s beach bar 
Beer at the hotel’s beach bar 
Walk down to the hotel’s beach area 
Approaching the hotel 
Hersonosis 
Dog day afternoon 
Hersonosis.
I imagine this is a bit of a nightmare at the height of the season.
Note the strip joint
The harbour at Hersonosis 
An extended holiday best forgotten
Spent a relaxing 7 days apart from the journey home. A 12 hour delay (which eventually turned into 13+ hours) welcomed us as we arrived at the airport. The TUI rep informed us that they’d take us to an all inclusive hotel for the evening. I remember thinking “we’re at their mercy now” and we were. The hotel was shocking. The rooms looked like a youth hostel. So glad we only stayed 12 hours in them. Needless to say I didn’t bother with the all inclusive or the room. Thankfully, I wasn’t here for the bulk of my stay and I’ve managed to block this from my memory (especially when the compo turns up)
No, just no! 
80s robotic sex toy in every bathroom 
Interesting conversation piece in the hotel’s lobby
Transforming a tired Edwardian Hallway
Spent a day tidying up my old hallway. After toying with light grey then dark grey I decided that some colour was needed. A cheap pot of paint from B&Q, a free day and all was set……
