A Developer's Experience https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/devux/feed.xml Sometimes the developers are the user in UX. Let's make their life easier. Wed, 17 Apr 2019 04:08:19 GMT en-US hourly 1 Talking bots at NDC Sydney 2017 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/devux/talking-bots-at-ndc-sydney-2017 Mon, 14 Aug 2017 10:49:38 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devux/?p=116 Talking bots at NDC This year at NDC we have four talks tackling the new(ish) area of conversational platforms and bots. Each talk takes a slightly different approach to bot building - some more technical, others taking a more human centered approach. This is a quick overview of the bot sessions by Microsoft staff you'll find at NDC Sydney 2017.

The need to know deep dive

The best place to start is by joining Vishesh Oberoi from Microsoft NZ Commercial Software Engineering who's taking a deep dive in to building bots with Microsoft technologies and services. This session is a great starting place to set the stage whether you've played with bots or not. There will be plenty of coverage of all the bits and pieces it takes to build a modern bot with the latest tech. Deep dive into building Bots with the Microsoft Bot Framework and Cognitive Services. (Wednesday, 17:40 - 18:40, Room 6) Intermediate

The engineering problem

On Friday morning Azadeh and Jordan from Commercial Software Engineering based in Sydney are taking a look at bot building from an engineering view point. Converstaional UI's are a new paradigm, and Microsoft AI services are giving the power back to software engineers to build these radically new methods of system interaction. It's a new area - but all the old best practices are still there even if they are slightly veiled. Chatbots - the next UI (Friday, 10:20 - 11:20), Room 5) Intermediate

Look from the human perspective

Nigel Parker, Principle Software Engineer from NZ will be stepping through his unique solution to personal care using the most modern technologies. Bots are all vigilent, bots have all the information, why not make them use that data to help improve your quality of life! Take Control of the Data of You (Friday, 15:00 - 16:00, Room 2) Beginner

Shooting the breeze

Perhaps the most important part of building compelling converstaional systems is the... converstaion. It's a new area with new traps for beginners. Vish is back to run you through some of the latest thinking around how to build compelling bot experiences. The Art of Coding a Conversation: Designing Bots (Friday, 16:20 - 17:30, Room 5) Intermediate

The NDC Bot

Have I ever mentioned how awesome the developer community is in Australia? @luizbon has made a bit of a name for himself building bots for the various developer events around the place - and NDC Sydney is no different! Check out the NDC Sydney 2017 bot.]]> F#, ASP.NET Core and Docker https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/devux/f-asp-net-core-and-docker Wed, 26 Apr 2017 11:37:53 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devux/?p=95 https://github.com/jakkaj/aspnetcore_fsharp_docker .NET Core comes packed with a range of language choices - including F#. I've created a repo over on GitHub that runs you through how to get started with F#, before going through how to set up a dev environment in Visual Studio Code. It also includes how to use docker-compose to get your F# code running inside docker containers. Check out the post on GitHub!   b45462f6-28eb-11e7-94c1-996df56a6a16  ]]> Add nice icons to your Visual Studio Code experience https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/devux/add-nice-icons-to-your-visual-studio-code-experience Mon, 24 Apr 2017 15:07:54 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devux/?p=75 icon theme support. nice icons in vscode There are a number of themes out there and vscode-icons is one of the best. To install - bring up Quick Open ctrl-p and type ext install vscode-icons. Find the vscode-icons package and click install. Restart the editor. Once the editor restarts you need to enable your new icon theme. Go to File -> Preferences -> File Icon Theme, or crtl-shift-p and type theme to search for it. demo]]> Visualise Azure Functions using a SiteExtension https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/devux/visualise-azure-functions-using-a-siteextension Fri, 14 Apr 2017 18:44:56 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devux/?p=46 Tech: Node.js, Visual Studio Code, Nuget, Azure App Service Site Extensions, Kudu

Funcgraph on GitHub (including install instructions)

This is a light overview on how the Azure Function Grapher SiteExtension was built.

Azure Functions are great - you can quickly build software to solve some advanced scenarios using event based serverless code. The whole idea is that you write small "functions" that each solve their little piece of the puzzle.

Functions can take input from many sources and events like http, service bus, table writes, file writes etc. They can also output to these to in turn call more functions and other services.

The trouble is that as your function projects grow, as you add more and more input types it can be hard to see what is calling what, via which event/service etc.

Last week I saw a blog post Mathias Brandewinder (@brandewinder) here and it got me to thinking how cool it would be if that would work on my function sites.

Mathias' idea is that you iterate through functions on the file system, collate their settings from the function.json files before creating a visual graph.

This lead me to think about creating an Azure Site Extension. How hard could that be?

The great thing about Site Extensions is that you can install them in any (non-consumption plan based) function site and they will just start working. Even better is there is a really nice site (https://www.siteextensions.net/) that you can use to search and install them for you.

Project Requirements

  • It's a SiteExtenion
  • Iterates function.json files to gain data on how they are triggered and what outputs they send
  • Generates GraphWiz graphs

Node Environment Setup

This guide is a great example of a dev environment and is close to my environment. I use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Visual Studio Code (with Bash shell as terminal prompt).

I decided to build the new SiteExtension in Node. Node works well in the Azure App Service (i.e. inside Kudu) and there is an NPM package that allows the generation of GraphViz graphs.

Visual Studio Code is a great editor for Node development with code highlighting and great debugging capabilities.

This project is using ES6 and makes use of classes and arrow functions - they make JavaScript so nice to work with :)

Azure App Service File Layout

Along side the code of an Azure Function is a configuration file called function.json that this project queries to see the input and outputs. All functions are run inside the Azure App Service which is a custom version of IIS running on top of Windows.

You can log in to and browse the site files using a tool called Kudu which is installed in all App Service sites (https://.scm.azurewebsites.net/). Using this I was able to discover the Functions sitting in D:\home\site\wwwroot.

kudu

GraphWiz

I started off by seeing if I could even generate GraphWiz graphs in node. Sure enough there is an npm package called viz.js that does the job nicely.

(Full source on GitHub)

There is also a dependency on svg2png. Viz.js is able to output PNG format but not in Node, it requires the browser context. Svg2png is able to achive this in Node by using the phantomjs headless browser.

Iterate function.json files

When running inside Azure (e.g. as a SiteExtension) you have access to all App Service config variables on process.env. One of these variables process.env.HOME contains the full path to the site root (i.e. where the Functions are stored).

The project needs to be able to "walk" the folders under the site root of the Azure Site to discover the function.json files. There is an npm package called walk for just this.

This code demonstrates walk in action.

Dot Files

GraphWiz uses a format called Dot to generate graphs. It's a bit like a strange version of Json.

dotgraph.js is a little helper class to assist with generation of the dot formatted text.

This code takes the consolodated data from the function.json files and produces the dotgraph format ready to rendering in to a graph.

Building the graph is super simple using viz.js.

Once that is all generated, the result is returned to the code in server.js for delivery to the user.

Site Extension

Creating a site extension is super easy.

  1. Add a web.config file to the project so IIS knows how to work with the node project.
  2. Add a applicationHost.xdt file which allows the App Service to include this site as part of the sites offered on Kudu.
  3. Copy the site up to d:\home\SiteExtensions\funcgraph.
  4. Click Restart on the SiteExtensions tab.

This is enough to get the site extension going. It's easy because site extensions are just regular App Service sites with some extra config (applicationHost.xdt) and living in a differnt home (not wwwroot, but SiteExtensions).

You can now access the grapher at https://yoursite.scm.azurewebsites.net/functiongraph.

Make available on https://www.siteextensions.net/

Site extenions are nuget packages - but instead of being hosted on Nuget.org, they are hosted on siteextensions.net. If you've used nuget.org before then siteextensions.net will seem very familiar.

The nuspec generates a simple nuget package ready for upload using the nuget pack command. Install nuget from here and make sure it's in your OS path.

]]> Visual Studio 2017 Launch Tour and Content https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/devux/vs2017launch Wed, 15 Mar 2017 23:29:25 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devux/?p=1 launched Visual Studio and to celebrate in Australia we're hitting the road with a multi-city launch tour.

Reserve your spot!

Some venues have already sold out sorry! Contact me if you really really want to come and can't get a spot :)

Sydney - 21 March

Rydges Sydney Central 28 Albion St, Surry Hills Sydney, NSW

Canberra - 23 March

Rydges Capital Hill 17 Canberra Avenue, Forrest, ACT

Perth - 28 March

Bells Functions Upper Level, Pier 3 Barrack Street Jetty, Perth WA

Melbourne - 31 March

Taxi Riverside Yarra Building, Federation Square, Cnr Swanston St & Flinder St, Melbourne VIC

What's being covered

We've got a full day of content lined up in each location covering off all the new and exciting stuff across devops, cross platform mobile dev, app insights and testing plus much more.

Can't make it along to one of the days? No problem - we've got you covered.

The full Visual Studio Launch Keynote is availalbe to watch on Microsoft Channel 9.

.

It's a great and detailed presentation by Miguel de Icaza, Scott Hanselman, Julia Liuson, Brian Harry and Keith Ballinger.

Demo code and videos

We're also making the launch content available so you can get right in there and try things out yourself.

Visual Studio 2017 Install and Performance

Visual Studio 2017 Productivity

.NET Core tools in Visual Studio 2017

Visual Studio Tools for Docker

Visual Studio and Xamarin

Visual Studio Mobile Center

Visual Studio Team Services and DevOps

Redgate and Visual Studio 2017

Full listing of the demos are available on GitHub

For a full overview of the new features check out the full Visual Studio 2017 What's new Poster (woah right!)

If you have any questions please ping me on twitter @jakkaj or leave a comment here!

Cheers, Jordan.

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