Chapter 1, Ebook Manager and Catalogue App – .NET Core 3 on Windows Desktop, introduces the key features of .NET Core 3 – the headline feature being support for desktop applications in .NET Core. You will create a WinForms application based on the previous version of this book and upgrade it to use .NET Core 3. Then we will introduce XAML Islands and create a new desktop control using UWP and add it to the existing WinForms application.
Chapter 2, Task Bug Logging ASP.NET Core MVC App Using Cosmos DB, focuses on creating an ASP.NET Core MVC application that allows the user to capture tasks and log issues. The application will allow you to view captured tasks and to action them.
Chapter 3, ASP.NET Azure SignalR Chat Application, creates a real-time chat application using ASP.NET SignalR. Real-time web functionality is the ability of server-side code to push content to connected clients as it happens in real time. Once created, we'll create an Azure App Service instance and host the application there.
Chapter 4, Web Research Tool with Entity Framework Core, introduces you to Entity Framework Core and shows you how to create an ASP.NET Core MVC application that can be used to save links and social media posts for research purposes. Many such applications exist, such as Instapaper and Evernote. This application, however, will show you how to roll your own and add specific functionality.
Chapter 5, Building a Twitter Automated Campaign Manager Using Azure Logic Apps and Functions, investigates Logic Apps from Azure. The chapter guides you through the creation of a logic application, integrating the application to Twitter, and allowing the user to enter data into a spreadsheet, and have it automatically posted on Twitter.
Chapter 6, Stock Checker Using Identity Server and OAuth 2, illustrates the concept of authentication using the Identity Server OSS as a template. The chapter guides you through creating your own identity server and then logging into it from a UWP application.
Chapter 7, Building a Photo Storage App Using a Windows Service and Azure Storage, illustrates the concept of serverless computing. You will create an application that will back up photos on a user’s PC to Azure Storage. There are many backup services available to users these days. Azure Blob storage is but one such service that allows developers to create applications that utilize Microsoft’s servers to store files.
Chapter 8, A Load-Balanced Order Processing Microservice Using Docker and Azure Kubernetes Service, starts by covering the concept of microservices with an explanation of what they are and why you would use them. In this chapter, we'll introduce the concept of distributed systems. We'll build a microservice, configure a Kubernetes cluster on Azure Kubernetes, and use storage queues to interface with our microservice.
Chapter 9, Emotion Detector Mobile App Using Xamarin Forms and Azure Cognitive Services, creates a mobile application using Xamarin.Forms. In this chapter, we’ll integrate with Azure Cognitive Services and the camera on the device, allowing the user to take a picture of a face, and have Azure come back with a rating of that person’s emotions. We’ll then display on the screen what we think that person is feeling. We’ll cross-compile this to Android.
Chapter 10, Eliza for the 21st Century – UWP and MS Bot Framework, sets up a new UWP application using .NET Core 3. This will be a simple chat application but will interface with LUIS and an MS chat bot intended to pass the Turing test.
Appendix A, WebAssembly, covers WebAssembly, which has recently been integrated into all the main browsers, and allows code to be compiled down to WASM (a sort of IL for the browser). Microsoft has recently released a preview of something called Blazor, allowing Razor syntax to run in place of JavaScript.