Main competitors for ASP.NET in the field of web applications

The world of web development is constantly evolving, and ASP.NET is a popular framework among developers. But, what are the main competitors to ASP.NET in this field? Brace yourself, because there are a few heavy hitters out there. One of the biggest names is definitely PHP; it’s been around for decades and still going strong. Then there’s Java, which is often considered one of the most reliable and robust programming languages for web applications. Of course, we can’t forget about Ruby on Rails, which has gained a lot of popularity in recent years due to its simplicity and ease of use. These are just a few of the big players that ASP.NET is up against, but it’s exciting to see the competition thriving in this space!

How hard is it to learn ASP.NET from scratch

Are you ready to embark on a thrilling new journey into the world of coding? Learning ASP.NET from scratch may seem daunting, but don’t let that scare you away! With a little bit of dedication, hard work, and a positive attitude, you can absolutely master this exciting programming language. Trust me, once you start building your own dynamic web applications and seeing your ideas come to life on the web, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start learning ASP.NET sooner! So what are you waiting for? Let’s dive in and explore the limitless possibilities of ASP.NET together!

Main ASP.NET advantages in comparison with other platforms

When it comes to web development, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of options out there. But if you’re looking for a platform that offers both efficiency and flexibility, then ASP.NET is the way to go! With its robust framework and built-in security features, ASP.NET lets you build dynamic web applications with ease. Plus, it’s constantly evolving and improving, with updates that ensure compatibility with the latest technologies and trends. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting out, ASP.NET is a game-changer that will take your web projects to the next level. So why settle for anything less? Choose ASP.NET and experience the thrill of cutting-edge web development!

The most famous resources created with ASP.NET

Buckle up, because we’re about to take a ride through some of the most famous ASP.NET resources out there! From powerful development frameworks to cutting-edge web applications, ASP.NET has been the backbone of some truly amazing digital creations over the years. Perhaps the most well-known of them all is the beloved content management system, Drupal, which has empowered content creators across the world to build and publish with ease. Then there’s DotNetNuke, a content management and web application development tool that’s been used by top brands like NASA, Lockheed Martin, and Hilton. And let’s not forget about Orchard, an open-source web CMS that’s earned itself an army of dedicated users thanks to its flexibility and customizability. These are just a few examples of the incredible resources that developers have built on top of ASP.NET – the possibilities are truly endless!

How long it takes to master a basic ASP.NET course to get started

Ready to dive into the exciting world of ASP.NET? You’re in luck – mastering the basics of this powerful web development framework doesn’t have to be a long and arduous process. With the right resources and a little bit of dedication, you could be well on your way to creating high-quality web applications in no time. So how long does it take to get started with ASP.NET? Well, that depends on a number of factors, including your prior experience with coding, your learning style, and the resources you have available. But with a little bit of perseverance, a willingness to learn, and a solid foundation in the fundamentals, you could be well on your way to mastering ASP.NET in just a matter of weeks or months. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to get started!

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The Internet has been growing exponentially for the past ten years. This has led to an explosion in the number and variety of applications on offer. It is easy to get carried away by the ever-growing potential of an API. Too often, though, applications built on top of APIs suffer from poor APIs—or lack of attention to their quality—resulting in poor user experiences and increased costs when using them. The Web API Project aims to encourage the creation of stable, dependable, well-tested APIs on the web. These will become the standard for all future websites.

If you are developing an API, you must make it testable. API testing becomes more critical as your API grows in complexity and use. Every new API is like a new test. You want to make it as easy as possible for others to call your API, but limits and edge cases need to be considered. If your end goal is maintainability, testable APIs are best.

Two factors decide if an API is good. Is it a general-purpose interface for a service that anyone can use? And does it allow the client to control the service remotely? If the API provides limited functionality but is general purpose and allows remote control, it is almost guaranteed to be good. If it provides limited functionality, the client can interact with it via the browser (and therefore has an established user interface). It probably means that the author has not taken the time to implement security measures. This article discusses various ways of testing your API.

Unit testing

We’ve arrived when the WebWeb is saturated with hundreds (perhaps thousands) of different products, all of which promise to improve your life. And yet, testing is still an infrequent activity among developers.

Web APIs are notoriously challenging to test. To make things worse, each recent version of the web API requires its developers to make recent changes, which means they’re not always aware of regressions until it’s too late. Developer acceptance testing (aka acceptance release) is a best practice for making sure your web services work with alternative versions of web API without causing breakage. It ensures your users have a consistently exceptional experience when using your services.

It is essential to do unit testing with web APIs. There are two reasons: first, this helps you find and fix problems before they become critical; second, it helps you understand how the API works and provides insight into how other applications might use it.

For example, in a typical web API application, you might have a client that requests a particular record from the server, and you should be able to respond with the data. However, if the request is invalid (for example, if the client provided an invalid IP address), you will receive an invalid request.

End-to-end Testing

End-to-end tests ensure that a web API received by a client does not change dramatically before the request is handled. When an API change occurs, an HTTP request using the old API should be matched against the corresponding request using the new API; if there is a mismatch, an error will be returned.

If the new data matches what we expected to be received, everything proceeds as though the request had been made using the old API. This allows end-to-end tests to be conducted as early in the development cycle as possible before any changes have been made to any of the microservices that make up the application.

There’s an abundance of open source web APIs and frameworks out there. With so many options, it’s challenging to figure out which ones are worth adding to your stack. Besides readability and maintainability, there are other benefits to using end-to-end tests – such as better feedback during development.

Integration Test

API integration testing involves a series of processes to ensure that any issues encountered in using the API are reproducible and can be identified and resolved before critical functionality is exposed to the public. This can include testing the end-to-end solution using the latest version of the application, running load tests on Nginx if an API is enabled through a CDN, and using Xdebug for early detection of XSS and other exploitable vulnerabilities.

Running integration tests on front-end APIs is essential, and it’s essential to do them right. API testing ensures that your application uses the given API correctly and against all combinations of client and server states. If an API can fail unexpectedly, then an application that relies on it will not work and may crash or become unresponsive. API integration tests are not just for code reuse—this is important for ensuring that notifications, messaging, context switching, and other interactions work as expected between applications that use the same data source.

It is common practice to mock up API endpoints in a separate browser tab and invoke them in the corresponding production code. This provides us with a way to validate that the service we are interacting with works as expected before creating another request.

The problem comes when creating such integration test scripts often fails because of insufficient testing of the underlying API. This is because API clients often return unfrequented tuples when calling a method on a virtual service.

Bottom Line

When a new API is released, there are many questions about how to use it correctly and whether it’s suitable for production. As a result, API testing has become an essential part of the software development workflow. When users use an application, questions need to be asked about how it works and its impact on its experience. Thus, API testing plays a vital role in keeping application development processes sustainable by ensuring that changes are revealed to users when they are needed most.

As outlined above, there are three ways to ensure your API functions as intended: unit testing, end-to-end testing, and integration testing. Unit testing is the least risky option, but it is the most expensive. End-to-end testing requires the developer to keep track of every call made to the API, but it can provide more reliable results in the unlikely case something goes wrong. Finally, integration testing allows you to make one call to an application using an existing endpoint and see what output that API returns without making a request. The best practice for all three is to make use of a stack trace when reporting issues to developers.

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ASP.NET Core is a new web framework created by Microsoft as a replacement for the legacy technology that has existed since ASP.NET 1.0. Dropping legacy dependencies and designed from the ground up, ASP.NET Core 2.1 is designed for cross-platform execution and gives the developer much better productivity.

What is Unit Testing?

Software testing may be new to some people, but it’s not complicated. Let’s start with unit testing (or unit testing). The formal definition from Wikipedia is “a process in programming that allows you to check for correctness individual modules of the source code of a program, sets of one or more program modules, together with the corresponding control data, procedures for use and processing.” I prefer to use a more accessible definition: unit testing is used to make sure that after adding new functionality or fixing bugs, the code in your application works as expected.

A good unit test has three parts. The first is the Arrange part, which is used to prepare any resources your test might need. In the above example, I don’t need any preconfiguration, so the Arrange part is empty (but I still leave a comment on it). The next part, called Act, is the part where the tested action is performed. In this example, I call the data repository on an entity of type Album to get the entire set of albums from the data source that uses the repository. In the last part of the test, we make sure or Assert that the result of the performed action was correct. In this test, I verify that I only got one album from the data repository.

I will be using the xUnit unit testing tool for this article. xUnit is an open source package for the .NET Framework and .NET Core. We’ll take a look at the .NET Core version of xUnit that ships with the .NET Core 2.1 SDK. You can create a new Unit Test project using the .NET Core dotnet test cli command, or from the xUnit Test project template in your favorite IDE such as Visual Studio 2017, Visual Studio Code, or JetBrain’s Rider.

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Since our demo project Chinook.API is very lightweight, and integration testing can be done for it (more on that later), I found myself concentrating most on unit tests in my Domain and Data projects. I will not go into details on how you should unit test (since that is beyond the scope of this article). I want you to test as many of your Domain and Data projects as possible using data that is independent of your production database. This is the next topic we’ll cover, called Data and Object Mocks.
Why use data / object mocks in your unit tests?

We looked at what and why we need for unit testing. It is also important to understand how to properly unit test your ASP.NET Core Web API code. Data is the key to testing your API. You need to have a predictable dataset that you can test. This is why I would not recommend using production data or any data that may change over time without your knowledge. We need a stable dataset to ensure that all unit tests are running and validate the contract between the code segment and the test. As an example, when I test the Chinook.Domain project to get an Album with ID 42, I want to be sure that it exists and has the details expected from it, such as the album name, and is associated with an Artist. I also want to make sure that when I get a set of albums from the data source, I get the expected shape and size that matches the unit test I wrote.

Many colleagues use the term mocks to refer to this type of data. There are many ways to mock data for unit tests, and I hope you create as “real” a dataset as possible. The better your data you create for your tests, the better your test will be. I would advise you to first ensure that your data is free of privacy concerns and does not contain personal or confidential data of your company or your client.

To meet our need for clean, stable data, I create unique projects that encapsulate data mocks for my Unit Test projects. For the sake of clarity, let’s call my mocked project Chinook.MockData (as you can see in the original demo code). My MockData project is almost identical to my regular Chinook.Data project. It has the same number of data repositories and each one implements the same interfaces. I want the MockData project to be stored in a Dependency Injection (DI) container so that the Chinook.Domain project can use it in the same way as the Chinook.Data project connected to a production data source. This is why I love dependency injection. This allows me to switch Data projects in configuration without any code changes.

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