Here I’ll start a series of little post that will build a new application based on the following stack: ASP.NET MVC5, Angular 1.5.x and MongoDB.

The code used in these tutorials can be found under my git hub project: myClub

Every post has his own dedicated branch, so you can just use  “git checkout <branchname>” to find all the source code of the post you’re interesting in.

1.0  Create a new MVC core project

To generate a new project we’ll use Yeomen.  Open a commend prompt/bash shell or powershell shell on the location you want to put your new project.

mkdir myClub
cd myClub 
yo aspnet 

Choose Web Application Basic

Provide a name.

1.1.           Add Angular to MVC app

1) Add Angular, from command line inside you project dir: 

bower install angular angular-ui-router –save

 Add angular to _layout.cshtml : 

<script src="~/lib/angular/angular.min.js"></script>

2)      Create two js scripts under wwwroot

app.config.js

(function () {
    'use strict';

    angular.module('myClub')
    .config(initrouter);

    function initrouter($stateProvider, $locationProvider, $urlRouterProvider) {
        $locationProvider.html5Mode(true);
        $urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/');
        $stateProvider
            .state(
                'home',
                {
                    url: '/',
                    templateUrl: 'app/home.html',
                    controller: "HomeController",
                    controllerAs: 'vm'
                }
            )
            .state(
                'myteam',
                {
                    url: '/myteam',
                    templateUrl: 'app/myTeam.html',
                    controller: "MyTeamController",
                    controllerAs: 'vm'
                }
            );
    }
})();

app.module.js

(function() {
    'use strict';

    angular.module('myClub', ['ui.router']);
})();

  3) Add two controllers

myTeam.controller.js 

(function () {
    'use strict';

    angular
        .module('myClub')
        .controller('HomeController', myTeam);

    myTeam.$inject = ['$location'];

    function myTeam($location) {
        /* jshint validthis:true */
        var vm = this;
        vm.players = [];


        vm.title = 'Home';

        activate();

        function activate() {
           
        }
    }
})();

home.controller.js

(function () {

    'use strict';

    angular

        .module('myClub')

        .controller('HomeController', myTeam);

    myTeam.$inject = ['$location'];

    function myTeam($location) {

        /* jshint validthis:true */

        var vm = this;

        vm.players = [];

        vm.title = 'Home';

        activate();

        function activate() {

        }

    }

})();

      4) Add two html pages

home.html

<div class="jumbotron">
    <div class="container">
        <h1>MyClub</h1>
        <p></p>
    </div>
</div>
<div>
    
</div>

myteam.html

<div>

    <p>My Team</p>

</div>

5) Reference the js scripts in _layout.cshtml

     <script src="~/lib/angular/angular.min.js"></script>
    <script src="~/lib/angular-ui-router/release/angular-ui-router.js"></script>
    <script src="~/app/app.module.js"></script>
    <script src="~/app/app.config.js"></script>
    <script src="~/app/home.controller.js"></script>
    <script src="~/app/myTeam.controller.js"></script>

6)      Add angular app inside and move the navbar from _layout.html to index.cshtml

Index.cshtml

In this post I demonstrate how you can create and update your Azure infrastructure as part of a build in Visual Studio Online (VSO).  This enable to deliver and test your code and your infrastructure continuously. 

Under your VSO project, choose build, and right click your build and choose “edit”, add an Azure Resource Group Deployment.

To be able to provision the infrastructure from your VSO build your Resource Group Deployment need to receive the permission to be modify infrastructure in your Azure subscription.  Therefore you can use a Service Principal.  This msdn article details how you can create a service principal inside your subscription and use it inside your deployment.

Watch out: if you’ve several subscriptions, chances are that you run under the wrong subscription, this will result in the following error: “The provided information does not map to an AD object id”.
You’ll need to select the proper subscription, just after the step: “Add Azure Account” use the following command: Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionId <subscription-id>

The remaining steps are obvious.

Select your Azure Subscription, provide a name to your resource group, select the ARM template inside your VS solution and the parameter file you want to use for this deployment.

Now you can include this step inside your continuous integration build or create a specific build for your infrastructure setup that you can trigger at will. 

Here we want to create our Azure Web App from within visual studio.  The goal is to be able to recreate the infrastructure at will and host a web app on it.  We do this by including an Azure Resource Group project inside our solution. This bundle the code of our website with the definition of the infrastructure that is needed to host the website. The Azure Resource Group project contains the description of your infrastructure inside an ARM(Azure Resource Manager) template and one or many parameter files. With this project you make sure that your configurations can be consistently repeated, tested, shared and promoted across different environments. This concept is called “infrastructure as code”.

First we need to add an Azure Resource Group project to our visual studio solution.

Right-click Add, new project.

If you didn’t have downloaded the Azure SDK, you first need to install it.

Choose “Get Microsoft Azure SDK for .Net” from the Cloud category and complete the installation steps.

Once the Azure SDK installed, reload your solution, right click on your solution, add, new project and select Cloud, “Azure Resource Group”, provide a name to your project and click OK.

Here we’ll setup a simple website.

Then we’ll need to fill in the parameters.  You can do this via the deploy wizard or directly inside the “Website.param.dev.json” file. The file is located under your ARM project in the folder Templates.

The siteName and hostingPlanName are up to you, you can fill in what you like or provide the name of an existing one.  For siteLocation you’ve to choose between one of the Azure datacenter regions, you find the list under: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/regions/

Just Copy the name of the region that is appropriate to you.

Right click your ARM project and choose Deploy, New Deployment.

 Click on Deploy

Once completed you should see the newly created website in the portal.

Now you can publish your web app through Visual Studio.

Right Click your web project, choose publish and select “Microsoft Azure Web App”.

Here a couple of links in dutch, french and English with info on how to learn Kodu to kids:

In het Nederlands:

http://www.bs-windekind.be/Computerhuisje/Afbeeldingen_downloads/Programmeren%20met%20KODU.pdf

Vidéos

Les1: Basis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpY6-qIJMUg

Les2: Uitgebreid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFxZU-1dqo

Les3: Vijand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRF7cgOQHwM

Les4: Padden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe8pEuvKKEo

Les5 : Race Game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwQG-BcWZhs

Getting started with Kodu Game Lab

http://www.cs.unb.ca/~wdu/gamecamp/kodu-manual-2010.pdf

Tutorial pdf:

http://resources.hkedcity.net/downloadResource.php?rid=1356004239&pid=1142185599

Videos

Basics :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXhJ1_ijE7k

Football :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRZp27K6dUc

Racing Game :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRJuEm0-vSA

Kodu en français

Installer : http://jdolle.simdif.com/programmation_jeux.html

Initiation :

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/fr/Kodu

Vidéos

Leçon 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdxztxjJu98

Partie2 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfePm7VpK4A

Partie3 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71GDXPp8Ez4

Through this link you can download my course for Arduino beginners. This course is one of the many I use to entertain kids during our coding-dojos sessions.  Yesterday it was the first time in Brussels we gave an Arduino session. We got kids going from 10 to 14 years. The session was a success. Despite the fact that none of them had any electronic or c-like programming background most of them managed to build one or several projects and present it to their colleagues.

Each project is intended to be built in two steps.  First the students can simply follow the schematic and can copy/paste the code they’ll find by following the provided link.  Then they need to complete a simple assignment consisting in extending what they build in the first step.  To complete the second step they need to make simple changes on the board and in the code.  Hints are provided to help them, so no real coding or electronic know-how is required.

The first project is simply making a led blink, the students should all start with this one.  Once the first assignment done they can choose between three different projects: a love-o-meter, music instrument and a lazer-tag.

Download link

Here is a little coding exercise inspired from one of the codeingame puzzels. It was ported based on the Mars Lander-2 game made by mrswanson.  This game is primarily targeted as a coding exercise for kids/students to learn programming.

Your mission: reprogram the mars lander.

In fact the problems concerns the landing phase for “Mars Lander”, the landing ship which contains the Opportunity rover. Mars Lander is guided by a program, and right now the failure rate for landing on the NASA simulator is unacceptable.

Built as a game, the simulator puts Mars Lander on a limited zone of Mars sky. The zone is 138m wide, the center of his position is at position “LanderX”. The ship can get into the zone at a variable location but may not crash on the mountains.

Your mission is to write a new artificial intelligence program that will enable Mars Lander to land safely on Mars without crashing. The program will have to go through a series of increasingly complex simulator tests.

You’ll find the Mars Lander program under:
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/64875092/

Tips:

– You should add your code inside the lander forever loop.
Click on the lander sprite, in the “Scripts” tab you should see:

– To drive the lander you should broadcast “left”, “right” or “up” messages.

For a landing to be successful, the ship must:

– land inside the flat ground, the center of the landing path is at horizontal coordinate 0 (when  x = 0).  (=LanderX)

– vertical speed (=ymotion) must be limited ( ≤ 1 m/s).

– horizontal speed (=xmotion) must be limited ( ≤ 1 m/s).

Have fun!

Wouldn’t it be great if I ‘had a central place where I could keep and work on all my little nuggets of utility code I’ve written over the years. Also be able to download them from nuget would be very convenient. This is why I’ve decided to setup a new project on Github. There I just posted the first library of my personal Swiss army knife framework.

These libraries where primarily designed to build loosely-coupled applications where you can swap out particular components without affecting the rest of the application. Most of my libraries are just small layers above existing frameworks providing a common API that simplify their usage (for me at least). The libraries ease the use of these frameworks by providing standard configurations and exposing only the functionalities I found useful for me through what I saw as a “common API”.

The first library I uploaded is: Go.Simple.Logging

GoSimple.Logging is a small and simple library that provides a common interface for logging. It comes together with an implementation for Log4Net: GoSimple.Logging.Log4Net.

It provides a simple logging interface (Logger.Debug(..), Logger.info(..), Logger.warn(…), Logger.Error(…),….).  I use this nuget package in all my projects to easily integrate with Log4Netwithout having to remember how to configuer & setup Log4Net.

The library comes with an appender to send the logs through syslog to a Splunk server. The TcpSyslogAppender you’ll find in the Log4Net implementation was extensively tested and fine-tuned on many large scale applications running in production.

You can download it through nugget by using the nugget console:

Install-Package GoSimple.Logging.Log4Net

The most valuable extensions you’ll find in this project are:

• Syslog Appender: used to send your logs over TCP or UDP to a syslog server like Splunk, Logstach or Kiwi.
• Rolling File Appender: when GoSimple rolls a log file, it saves and closes the old file and starts a new file.

GoSimple.Logging comes with a sample project, you’ll find it on the github project home. It provides an example of how to configure your application for GoSimple.Logging in just one line of code. You’ll also find a sample Log4Net config file with example config sections for each appender.

To enable it on your project you need to :

• 1) Review the Log4Net.config file on the application root.
• 2) In VS set the property “Copy to output directory” of the Log4Net.config file to “Copy always”
• 3) In your application entry point (bootstrapper/main) initialize the Logger:
  Logger.Initialize(new Log4NetLogger());

Voilà that’s all you need to configure to enable logging in your application.

To print out the current Powershell version you can use the $PSVersionTable variable that was introduced since Powershell version 2.

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion