Develop Reference

Using Realm Sync with Azure Functions

I'm trying to use Realm Cloud in an Azure Function but it keeps giving me an error:
make_dir() failed: Permission denied Path: /realm-object-server/
Is there a way to configure Azure Functions to have permissions to create files? I'm new to Azure Functions, this is my first one so I'm not really sure of all the particulars.

I have found one solution to this. Inside Azure function, you can only create any file or folder inside the temp folder. So if you use following sync configuration, it should work. It worked for me.
var configuration = new FullSyncConfiguration(new Uri("/~/<your-realm-name>", UriKind.Relative), _realmUser, Path.Combine(Path.GetTempPath(), "realm-object-server"));
So basically, here you are passing the folder name to store the realm locally. If you don't pass the folder name, it will try to store it in a default location where you will get the access error.

I am not familiar with Realm, but functions has permissions to interact with the file system by default. See these links for information on the app service file system (this applies for functions too):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/operating-system-functionality#file-access
https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Understanding-the-Azure-App-Service-file-system
If the function is deployed using run from package, then the wwwroot is readonly. But since the path in the error message doesn't point to wwwroot, this is probably not the issue.
My best guess is that the code that is failing is trying to write to in an inappropriate location. The information in the links above should help resolve that. Maybe check to see if realm has a config setting that lets you specify which location it should be creating "realm-object-server" in.

You can use
SyncConfigurationBase.Initialize(UserPersistenceMode.NotEncrypted, basePath: Path.GetTempPath());

DNN Database Repository Reuse in Console Application

I have a project based on the Chris Hammond, Christoc, module template. I have a ton of code that I use to access data an external database. In my repositories I change the database from the default to whichever I need for that particular object. I do so with code that looks like this:
using (IDataContext ctx = DataContext.Instance(MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY))
{
var rep = ctx.GetRepository<Product>();
products = rep.Get().ToList();
}
The default database is switched in the call to .Instance(). The repositories are used by my custom DNN modules. The repository is part of the solution that contains multiple custom modules. When I compile and install using the Extensions part of DNN, everything works well. In the code above, MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY is found in a file MyModuleSettingsBase.cs file of my module solution. It is set to a simple string like "ProductDatabase". In the solution for the base DNN install (not the module solution), within the web.config file, there is a value in <connectionStrings> with name="ProductDatabase" which contains the actual connection string. This all links up fine on the DNN website.
Now I am writing a console application that does some monitoring of the site. I want to access the database to check values in the product table. I would like to reuse all of the repository code I have written. In an attempt to do so, I added a reference to the MyModules.dll file so I would only have one copy of the base code. This works to give me access to all the objects and the associated repositories but when I attempt to query data it fails. When debugging I can see that it fails on the line:
using (IDataContext ctx = DataContext.Instance(MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY))
When viewed in a debugger, the string value MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY is correctly set to "ProductDatabase" but the code is unable to link this with the actual connection string. I don't know where it would be checking for the connections string when running from my console application. I attempted to put a <connectionStrings> section into my App.config file but this didn't do the trick.
Is it possible to have MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY map to the connection string in an external application which references the DLL?
If so, where can I set the value of my connection string so it matches up to the key value stored in MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY?

I was faced similar problem 3 months ago, at that time I want to use DNN core libraries in my console application but I was failed.
I placed my queries in DNN official forum website and I got a valid response from Wes Tatters (DNN MVP).
Here is the post link: Reference URL
As your requirement of monitoring, I suggest you to create DNN Schedule Application. You can schedule it within DNN (Host->AdvancedSettings->Schedule), even good point is that you can use your repositories (DNN Libraries) in that schedule application.
I hope it solved your problem. Let me know if you have any questions.

CloudConfigurationManager vs WebConfigurationManager?

In an Azure Websites I was always using the following code to fetch some values from the config's app settings:
string property = WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["property"];
Just a couple of days ago I stublemd upon CloudConfigurationManager, and with it I can get the property like so:
string property = CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("property");
Although CloudConfigurationManager seems like it's better fitted to cloud use, I never had any issues with WebConfigurationManager.
Should I be using CloudConfigurationManager?
What are the differences between the two?
In what cases CloudConfigurationManager will behave diffrent from
WebConfigurationManager?

CloudConfigurationManager enables us to read configuration file regardless of the environment we are in.
So instead of writing environment specific code statements e.g., for web.config file:
WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MySetting"]
For ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file:
RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("MySetting")
We can write the below statement, which will read values from all the configuration files i.e., app.config, web.config and ServiceConfiguration.cscfg.
CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("MySetting")

CloudConfigurationManager requires Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Configuration assembly, part of Azure SDK or separate NuGet.
WebConfigurationManager requires System.Web.Configuration assembly, part of .NET Framework.

WebConfigurationManager and CloudConfigurationManager manage different configuration files.
WebConfigurationManager is for managing website's web.config file(s) and it's appsettings and connections strings
CloudConfigurationManager is for managing .cscfg files (for cloud services). His benefit is that you can manage configurations and connections from the azure portal directly.

I think you're better off using WebConfigurationManager.
With it, you have access to ConnectionStrings as well as AppSettings.
Both sets of settings you can update via the Azure Portal. They can then further be used in other Azure facilities/services, such as when configuring website backup.
Check this out for more information: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/windows-azure-web-sites-how-application-strings-and-connection-strings-work/

How to read a web.config from .Net Window Application

I'm developing a .NET Framework 4.0 based Windows application.
I have a requirement of distributing this window application, along with source code to client.
When I test I'm using my own database credentials.
So I want a method to somehow hide the app.config details.
For this, I tried with encrypting values in app.config but faced an issue with token keys.
While researching about it, I found that I can use:
System.Web.Configuration.WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration.
But that again required username and password for accessing remote server and don't want to show them to the client.
So for this I planned to read web.config hosted on IIS 7.5 Server.
Could you please help me in that context?
Or if you have better ideas to achieve the objective, do share.

The code is designed to be very close in syntax to the usual method used for accessing web.config from a web app. Pass the constructor the location of the web.config file you wish to parse and then use the AppSettings method to obtain the desired value;
string filename = #"c:\temp\Web.Config";
UK.Org.Webman.ConfigurationSettings ConfigurationSettings =
new UK.Org.Webman.ConfigurationSettings(filename);
string PrimaryDatabase = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["PrimaryDatabase"];

How to retrieve on which site the web application is currently running?

I am currently running a WCF service on an AppFabric server and my application needs to load a the web.config file dynamically to retrieve custom configuration sections.
On my development machine I can just load the configuration like this:
WebConfigurationManager.OpenMappedWebConfiguration(webMappedFile, virtualPath);
But on the test machine (AppFabric server) I am getting an exception and it seems that I need to specify a third parameter which is actually the site the web application is running on:
WebConfigurationManager.OpenMappedWebConfiguration(webMappedFile, virtualPath, "MySite");
So I tried to hard code it and it worked. Anyway this is not acceptable, so I need to dynamically provide the site to the WebConfigurationManager because I do not on which site the service will be running in the future. Do anybody knows how to achieve that?
Thanks.

If you are running this code as part of handling a request you could use:
Request.ServerVariables("server_name")
see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms525396(VS.90).aspx
Edit based on your comment
The parameter that you need is the Site Name, not the machine name, your code be running on many machines. If the code is running somewhere where it no longer knows that it is on a web site, then it is difficult for it to get the name of the web site that it is running on.
You then have two options:
Send the name as a parameter from a layer that has httpconext
Not sure if this will work: but you could try adding a reference to system.web to your project. It may compile, but you could get a null reference exception when you run it. Probably worth a try.

How about Server.MachineName