Feature flags can be useful for changing the runtime behavior of an application with minimal impact. Having a UI to toggle the feature fl...
.NET asp.net coreWhat is a machine key? According to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.web.security.machinekey?view=netframework-4.7.2 a...
.NET asp.netWe’re in the process of upgrading our infrastructure to run our Azure Web Apps in multiple datacenter locations behind Azure Traffic Mana...
.NET asp.net asp.net coreIt can be tricky to run integration tests targeting a web server using the command line. Essentially, we need to: Start the applicati...
JavaScript npmI was trying to get a global .NET Core tool working on my development machine, which just so happens to be running macOS. I also work wit...
.NET macOSWe’ve moved around CSS frameworks in the past few years, Semantic UI for our application layer, and Bootstrap for our static sites. As ou...
SASSNew to the frontend at RIMdev, or looking for more about our Frontend team? Here’s a quick overview of our team, tools, and culture! As ...
Team RIMdev FrontendSimple transitions Vue.js has an extremely helpful was to handle animations in web apps. In a simple example if we want to display somet...
Vue.js JavaScript AnimationsAs web applications have gotten more complex, so has the technologies used to build them. Magic can be good when all works as intended, b...
Webpack JavascriptWe’re in the process of scaffolding out our Microsoft Azure environments using Terraform. We’re looking at deploying consistently from ma...
Azure TerraformRequirement ASP.NET Core 2.2 or 3.0 Why can’t I do this in earlier versions? Read ASP.NET Core 2.2 First Look – Endpoint Routing ...
ASP.NET Core Routing MiddlewareHealth checks in ASP.NET Core are useful for reporting the health of your ASP.NET Core web application. But, this functionality can’t dir...
.NETAs I’ve walked through upgrading a number of solutions to target a new version of the .NET Framework, I’ve compiled a list of helpful ste...
.NETWhat is WSL? Windows Subsytsem for Linux (aka WSL) is an excellent tool for running Linux-based binaries natively in Windows. With the i...
WSL git ASP.NET MVCIn development it is common to not want to share everything in our code. Things like usernames, password, links to an api, and more shoul...
Vue.js JavaScript WebpackIn Vue computed properties are a life saver when it comes to being able to add logic to data that we need to use in the UI. We want to ke...
Vue.js JavaScriptUpdated Solution! Thanks for the post!If you don't want to create a web.config, you can also drive this through the <AspNetCoreHo...
asp.net asp.net coreI, Khalid Abuhakmeh, recently wrote about my [Razor Pages first impressions][khalid] and am mostly positive about the addition to the ASP...
asp.net asp.net core razorWe’re in the process of scaffolding out our Microsoft Azure environments using Terraform. While Terraform does an excellent job creating ...
Terraform OSSTL;DR Explicitly using SqlBulkCopy might never cause this problem since mapping is done manually, but NPoco’s usage does automatic map...
NPoco SqlBulkCopyAt Ritter Insurance Marketing, we continue to invest heavily in Web APIs primarily built on top of ASP.NET Web API 2. To supplement our APIs, we also make client libraries available to our other applications. These client libraries hold request and response objects that help reduce the duplication across our ecosystem.
As we were building a new endpoint, Cheng Yang, another developer, asked:
Why are some of the primitive types on the request object
nullable?
In our case, primitives include:
boolintdoubleDateTime and DateTimeOffset
We build most of our endpoints to accept JSON. The JSON passed in then goes through a model binding process that maps a JSON request into our C# representation. That’s great, but we lose one thing: intent.
For example, take these three JSON requests:
{ }
{ "count" : null }
{ "count" : 0 }
When mapped to this C# object we get something that is logically equivalent:
public class HelloWorldRequest {
public int Count { get;set; }
}
Which results in a Count value of 0. The value of our C# request object does not reflect the callers intent.
When we use Nullable<T> on our request, we get a tri-state property.
This tri-state attribute of Nullable allows us to respond to the requester with more meaningful validation messages.
- "You forgot to set 'Count' on the request."
- "'0' is an invalid value for 'Count'."
In our previous example, our request would change:
public class HelloWorldRequest {
public int? Count { get;set; }
}
Nullables work for us the majority of the time, but if you want to get advanced, you can hook directly into Web API 2 model binding. We did this for our PATCH implementation, which you can read in our series entitled “Extending Patch Support For ASP.NET Web API.”]
Requests are the conduit between our requesters and us, and it is important to keep as much fidelity around intent as we possibly can. Nullables on our request objects help due to their tri-state behavior. The practice allows us to respond with more meaningful validation messages, helping our users diagnose and speed up development. In this case, nulls are a good thing.
