HttpHandler registration on XSP4 vs IIS

The problem

You're developing an ASP.NET HttpHandler on Mono using XSP and now you need to deploy your app on IIS. What worked on XSP4 isn't working anymore and strange errors appear.

Let's start with the config that works on XSP4

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <system.web>
    <httpHandlers>
      <add verb="*" path="*" type="MyHandler" />
    </httpHandlers>
  </system.web>
</configuration>

But you put that same Web.config file on IIS it throws errors.

The solution

As you see the registration happens inside system.web/httpHandlers section. That works on XSP4 and older ASP.NET but it's not the case on modern IIS. In there you need to switch to system.webServer/handlers section like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <handlers>
      <add name="name" verb="*" path="*" type="MyHandler" />
    </handlers>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

That's it! Happy coding!

Getting started with POI and React

This will be a quick one and, quite frankly, a very obvious one. But since I forgot how it is done I better write it down for posterity (and me).

Setting things up

As always you'll need a folder. Let's call it my-example

$ mkdir my-example
$ cd my-example

Then we need to initialize our project:

$ npm init

and accept all the defaults.

Next we need a few packages installed:

$ npm install poi react react-dom --save-dev

Creating poi.config.js

Since by default POI compiles JSX down to Vue's interpretation of what JSX is we need to tell it to use React's JSX compilation. We do that by adding the poi.config.js file with the following content:

module.exports = {
  jsx: 'react'
}

Creating start script

Finally, to make our project setup complete we should add a start script to package.json to make use of the locally installed POI:

"scripts": {
  "start": "poi"
}

Time for a simple app

With all that setup all there is to it is to test it with some React components. For that we will create index.js with the following content to display a Hello, world!-type app:

import React from 'react'
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom'

ReactDOM.render(<h1>Hello, world!</h1>, document.getElementbyId('app'))

And just like that, in under 3 minutes, by the magic of POI, we have a fully-working application that can be developed, tested and built for production deployment. I like it!

Happy coding!

Big Fat Ass - Windows + Visual Studio

Warning: this post contains bad language, obscene descriptions and a lot of frustration. Don't read it if you're sensitive.

The fucking nightmare

In the past I used to work with Windows. I liked it - especially Windows 2000 and then XP. It was kind of fresh, you know? Still looking the same as the old win but kinda... better. And after a few small upgrades to the hardware, like a tiny bit more RAM, it worked really fast. I was reluctant to look for other OSes for more reasons than just I got used to it: Delphi, the IDE I was working most of the time in, was not available on other platforms. And I loved Delphi. It was the best thing ever! Especially the Personal edition which was bloody fast and easy to use.

At one point I gave Linux a try. Slackaware to be precise. I felt this was not just for me but also not for any sane human being. I mean come on: compile kernel just to be able to install the distro? Are you fucking kidding me? Then I gave RedHat a try. Well.. better but still: 24 floppies just to install the basic OS? Are you fucking kidding me?!!! And then Ubuntu came along a few years later. I ordered the CD (good old days :D), installed it and liked it instantly. It looked different, foreign... but nice. I got along with the keyboard quite fast, cmd was finally bash and way more humane to work with... Basically, for the first time I didn't immediately went with "You have to be shitting me, man! What a shit hole!". But I was still a Delphi developer so it was more for entertainment than anything else...

Fast forward a few years and that stopped being a problem since I moved to Java.

2018

It's 2018. I work exclusively in Linux, I love every bit of it. I like that I can choose not to butcher my computer with CPU/GPU-intensive operations just to show the content of a fucking folder. I'm loving XFCE and everything about it. I use Linux Mint and my main occupation is frontend development so Windows is pretty much useless anyways. I play on Linux, I watch movies on Linux, I work on Linux. And everyone in my family does too and they like it! My distro of choice is Linux Mint because it is the closest approximation of Windows XP I can get out of the box. And it is good!

And then I decided to give .NET a spin... Man,.. there are decisions that one regrets moments after they are made. At first it wasn't so bad. I still used Linux with Mono, tried Core but it wasn't the right target I was looking for so Mono was the option. Everything seemed to work just fine, MonoDevelop rocks! Fast, easy, nice... I like. I even completed the entire project, was able to test it using XSP...

All was good just up to the point where I needed to test it in real conditions. NOTHING FUCKING WORKED! NOT A SINGLE FUCKING THING! JAVA KILLER MY ASS!!!

So basically creating a solution in MonoDevelop does not mean you will be able to load it into the latest Visual Studio. Windows, when I turned it on, immediately started taking over my CPU fan, spinning it so fucking fast the whole machine became more than just a bit warm. It was FUCKING HOT!!! And still... nothing fucking worked!!!

After a trial and error, looking at Stack Overflow and other enlightened sites I finally was able to throw away all the project files, recreated them in VS 2017 and then it still didn't fucking work! All because some idiot decided to switch from one XML configuration section to another. I mean for the love of God, really?! WHAT THE FUCK!?!?

It took me a better part of this evening to just get it started, then about 3 minutes to add a portion to my node module that converts from fucking backslashes to forward slashes (as though the rest of the fucking world were morons and used the wrong character for path separator) and I was finally on my marry to start hating Windows on my blog.

Post mortem

Unfortunately, as a front developer I need to have access to Edge which, surprise surprise!, is only available on fucking Windows. And this is the only reason I have a separate, dual boot notebook that runs a legal (my God, what a fucking waste of fucking hard earned money) copy of Windows 10.

I need a fucking drink after all this. No wonder .NET developers are so strange... there is a damn good reason for it!

God save us from Windows and .NET. Please!!!