Self-Registering APIs – Part 2: Authentication API, Registering Other Services, and Service Discovery

Today, I’ll be continuing the tour of my self-registering API architecture by taking a look at the authentication API and the mechanics of how a service registers itself. This will be a more practical dive than the previous post’s theory-heavy chit-chat.

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Self-Registering APIs – Part 1: An Overview

Several months ago, I started working on a new desktop application project that was to be backed by an microservice ecosystem. I ended up designing an API where the only well-known service is the one that handles authentication, and all other services register themselves with the authentication API and only access each other via service discovery. This yields extensibility: a new service doesn’t need to be explicitly set up in the ecosystem; just add it and go.

Overriding Static Members in C#

Yeah, you read that right. We’re gonna break some rules!

Lord of the Converters

…One Converter to bring them all and in the XAML bind them…

Last time, I briefly mentioned a WPF converter that I created that helps solve the Cambrian Explosion problem that comes with creating specialized converters. Today I’ll go over that converter and what makes it tick.

A Brief Start with UWP

At work I was recently assigned to a UWP app. This post chronicles my discoveries over the first couple days.

C# 7 Features I Don’t Like

It’s that time again! Time for my inner grumpy old man to come out and describe all that is wrong with the development of C# as a language!

They think of everything!

Ordinarily I like to pontificate on the merits (or detriments) of particular code design decisions. Instead today, I’d like to share a neat consequence of C# 6 that I found the other day.

Reinventing the Wheel

It’s an age-old question that just about every WPF developer has asked: How can I bind an event to a command?

An Interface By Any Other Name

We’re going to take a brief break from our series on plug-ins to explore an idea that I had regarding naming conventions, specifically interface naming in .Net.

Handling Errors from Plug-ins

Before we get into today’s topic, I have some sadness to report. My beloved Dallas Stars were eliminated from the NHL playoffs. Also, my favorite player, Trevor Daley, who now plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins, has suffered a broken ankle and will not be able to play in the Stanley Cup games. Happily, if the Penguins win the Cup, he’ll still get his name engraved on its holy base!

Anyway, enough of that. Let’s get on to software.

Last time we built a very simple pluggable program where each plugin provides a translation of the string Hello, World! Today, we’re going to explore some of the problems inherent in our approach.