Creating a Web API Controller with dynamic type

Most of the time while working with Web API; we were dealing with particular model from our domain and creating GET/POST/PUT/DELETE methods that map to CRUD operations. But today I faced an issue, where I need to store some data, and I don’t have a mapping class for the same....


Basic HTTP authentication in ASP.Net Web API

In this post I am going to show how to implement Basic HTTP authentication in a Web API project by customizing AuthotrizeAttribute. HTTP authentication is a standard protocol and can be easily handled by most popular client and mobile platforms. Basic authentication works as follows: - If a request requires...


How to do CSS and JavaScript Bundling and Minification in ASP.NET

ASP.NET 4.5 includes a new feature to minify and bundle CSS and JavaScript within your web application. Static content like javascript and css files contains lot of white spaces and comments. Bundling and minification improves load time by reducing the number of requests to the server and reducing the size...


How to broadcast a message from outside SignalR hub

Broadcasting a message from SignalR hub is pretty straight forward, but sometimes you may need to do the same from outside the hub, like from MVC controller or a Web Page. This snippet will help you to broadcast messages from outside hub. var context = GlobalHost.ConnectionManager.GetHubContext<MySampleHub>(); Context.Clients.All.Notify("Notification from Server"); In...


How to use NuGet without adding packages to TFS

In the recent project I was using few nuget packages. And I was using TFS. Committing these packages into TFS was increasing the size of the repository. Later I found a solution using Enable NuGet Package Restore option. You can enable this option by right clicking on the solution file...


How to configure WebAPI always return JSON

WebAPI will return JSON or XML based on the request accept header. But some times you may need to return JSON only, without considering the accept header. Here is the code snippet which will helps to return JSON always. GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.Clear(); GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.Add(new JsonMediaTypeFormatter()); You need to place this code in the...


How to return anonymous types from WebAPI

Sometimes you may required to return anonymous types from your WebAPI functions; I found a situation like this today, where I need to return list of values with a count, which was using to plot some graphs. Initially I thought of creating an class for this purpose with a count...


Entity Framework Error - The underlying provider failed on Open

Yesterday while working on an ASP.Net MVC application, I got an error like this from Entity Framework Data Context. The problem started when I deployed the application in IIS server, while in the development server (IIS Express) it was working fine. In the connection string, I was using Windows Authentication....