dotInsights | September 2024

Rachel Appel

Did you know? In C#, you can use a feature called caller info attributes to obtain information about the caller of a method. This can be incredibly useful for logging, debugging, or tracing. The attributes CallerMemberName, CallerFilePath, and CallerLineNumber provide information such as the name of the calling method, the path to the source file that contains the caller, and the line number in the source file from which the method was called.

Welcome to dotInsights by JetBrains! This newsletter is the home for recent .NET and software development related information.

🌟 Featured Content

Jérôme Laban

This month, we bring you featured content from Jérôme Laban. Jérôme has been programming since 1998, with a primary focus on .NET and C# development. Throughout his career in France, he has served as a teacher, trainer, and consultant, sharing his expertise with others. Currently, Jerome is the CTO of the open-source Uno Platform in Montreal and a Microsoft MVP for Developer Tooling. He is also a frequent speaker at .NET User Groups and Microsoft conferences, and hosts a weekly live coding channel on Twitch.

New JetBrains Rider Plugin for Cross-Platform .NET development

Thanks for having me as a guest on the blog, JetBrains! I’m excited to share some great news with the JetBrains Rider community, especially for those of you who are passionate about cross-platform .NET development. JetBrains Rider users can now rejoice as developing cross-platform applications with Uno Platform has just become significantly easier. With the latest release of the Uno Platform plugin for JetBrains Rider, gone are the days of tedious manual setup—everything you need is now integrated directly into Rider, streamlining your workflow and boosting productivity. 

What is Uno Platform anyway?

If you haven’t heard of Uno Platform yet, it is an open-source platform for creating beautiful, single codebase native mobile, web, desktop and embedded apps with .NET quickly.

A Seamless Development Experience

The new Uno Platform plugin for Rider puts a full suite of developer productivity tools right at your fingertips. Whether you’re leveraging C# and XAML Hot Reload for rapid iteration or taking advantage of robust debugging features, this plugin ensures that developing with Uno Platform on Rider is as smooth and efficient as possible. For a complete list of supported scenarios, be sure to check out our detailed documentation.

Uno Platform Solution Template Wizard

We didn’t stop there! We’ve also released the Uno Platform Solution TemplateWizard for Rider alongside the plugin. Available as part of the Uno Platform 5.3 release, this tool is designed to simplify your development process even further. How convenient to be able to access everything directly within Rider!

Key Features of the Solution Template Wizard

• Platform Targeting: Easy config for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, WebAssembly, and Linux.. 
• Architecture Selection: Choose between MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) or MVUX (Model-View-Update) design patterns, depending on your team’s preferred workflow and project needs.
• Feature Inclusion: Customize your project by selecting from various Uno extensions, such as Navigation, Logging, and Uno.Toolkit.UI.  Choose between C# or XAML markup languages as well as Material or Fluent design themes. 
• CI/CD Integration: Automatically generate YAML-based build scripts for GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps, streamlining your DevOps processes for cross-platform development.

Getting Started with Uno Platform

If you’re eager to dive in, we’ve got you covered. Our docs include step-by-step instructions on setting up your Rider environment on any operating system. Once you are set-up, follow our tutorial to create your first Uno Platform application using the newest templates directly in Rider.

With the Uno Platform plugin and the new Solution Template Wizard, JetBrains Rider has truly become a first-class citizen in the Uno Platform ecosystem. Whether you’re building for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, WebAssembly, or Linux, these new tools will help you streamline your development process, allowing you to focus more on writing code and less on setup.

🔗 Links

Here’s the latest from the developer community.

• Game Dev – Adding ALL the NPCs – Layla Porter
• REST, gRPC or GraphQL: When to Use What? – Gui Ferreira
• Exploring Preferences in .NET MAUI – Leomaris Reyes
• To Soft Delete or Not to Soft Delete – Steven Giesel
• Blazor Basics: Uploading Files in Blazor Server Web Applications – Claudio Bernasconi
• C# Beating Non-Stop PHP Framework: The Ultimate Guide – Dave Ward
• Using Semantic Kernel to create multi-agent scenarios – Matteo Pagani
• Is this a Monolith or Microservices? – Derek Comartin
• 2code ^ !2code | MSBuild & NuGet – Stefan Pölz with guest Martin Ullrich
• Using MassTransit with .NET Aspire – Chris Patterson
• C# 12- Type Aliasing – Bart Wullems
• 5 Simple Steps to Design a News Feed App with .NET MAUI ListView – Piruthiviraj Malaimelraj
• Tales from the .NET Migration Trenches – Middleware – Jimmy Bogard
• Simplifying [Theory] test data with Xunit.Combinatorial – Andrew Lock
• Taking Advantage of .NET Aspire to Build Event-Driven Apps Using CQRS – dotnet
• Understanding System.Diagnostics DiagnosticSource and DiagnosticListener (Part 1) – Steve Gordon
• Add a Property to the Top-level Statements Program class – Khalid Abuhakmeh
• Breakpoint Show Episode 026 – Watch Your Domain Specific Language! – Khalid Abuhakmeh, Maarten Balliauw & Chris Woodruff
• What Are the Proposed C# Type Unions and How Do They Relate to Discriminated Unions? – Peter Ritchie
• Hosting a Keycloak Container in .NET Aspire – Fiodar Sazanavets
• A curated list of Awesome Avalonia libraries and resources – Avalonia Team
• Adding Entity Framework for Blog Posts – Part 1 (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) – Scott Galloway
• Implementing CQRS with MediatR in .NET 8: A Complete Guide – Adrián Bailador

🔦 From our .NET Guide

Each month we feature tutorials or tips from our .NET Guide.

Generate commands with AI

When using any of the JetBrains IDEs, you have the option to let the AI Assistant generate the command for you if you can’t remember that PowerShell command or forgot the syntax for a specific shell command while working on Linux or macOS.

AI powered commands

C# Params collection

One of the benefits of the modifier in C# is that it allows methods to receive a varying number of arguments. This provides more flexibility at runtime when passing arguments, eliminating the need to create multiple overloads for the same method. Additionally, it makes the calling code more concise compared to the traditional approach for methods requiring this type of runtime flexibility.

C# Params collection

☕ Coffee Break

Take a break to catch some fun social posts.

Admit it. You laughed. 😂

Why was an API sad?
Because a test mocked it!

— Lou Creemers (@lovelacecoding) August 24, 2024

True story. 👀 

SQL programmers: CAPS LOCK magic? 😂 pic.twitter.com/DXl8MiBtM5

— Sonam Murarkar (@sonam_murarkar) August 12, 2024

🗞️ JetBrains News

What’s going on at JetBrains? Check it out here:

Celebrate 20 wonderful years of ReSharper with us! 🎉

JetBrains .NET Days Online 2024, our free community event, is back for its sixth edition!

🎉 Register and tune in live on September 25–26 for two days of demo-rich sessions and insightful discussions with .NET enthusiasts, developers, and industry leaders from around the globe.

More…

• Join Us for JetBrains GameDev Days 2024
• ReSharper Tips & Tricks with Matt Ellis – Livestream
• ReSharper 2024.2: Deepened C#12 and Initial C#13 Support, New AI Capabilities, Localization, and More
• Equality Analysis, Ref Structs, Culture Previews, Using Directives – C# Language Support in 2024.2
• Cast Expressions, Primary Constructors, Collection Expressions, List Patterns – C# Language Support in 2024.2
• Rider 2024.2: Full Line Code Completion, Reader Mode, Major Enhancements to Debugging, and More.
• ReSharper 2024.2: Deepened C#12 and Initial C#13 Support, New AI Capabilities, Localization, and More

✉️ Comments? Questions? Send us an  email. 

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