This is a set of core libraries developed and maintained by Ark as a set of helper or extensions of the libraries Ark choose to use in their LOB applications.

All libraries are provided in NuGet.

Support for .NET Standard 2.1, .NET 8.0 LTS.

The main library used by Ark in its stack are

• NodaTime
• SimpleInjector
• Polly
• Dapper
• AspNetCore

If you want to learn more about each project, look the respective Readme when present or directly at code. Documentation improvements are up-for-grabs ;)

Support for Speflow is no longer mainteined and will be removed in next Major.

The ReferenceProject has been migrated from Specflow to Reqnroll. For reasons you can read this but long story short: Specflow is no longer mainteined.

Ark.Tools.Reqnroll replaces Ark.Tools.Specflow: the only changes are in namespace.

To migrate:

1. Replace Techtalk.Specflow to Reqnroll in using
2. Replace Ark.Tools.Specflow to Ark.Tools.Reqnroll in both using and PackageReference
3. Replace Specflow.* to Reqnroll.* in PackageReference
4. Add reqnroll.json to test projects
5. Fix Verbs: Reqnroll default to Gherking style parameters instead of Regex style thus it might be required to update verbs as described here, specifying the regex start/end markers (^/$).

.NET SDK has been updated to .NET 8. AspNetCore packages only target .NET8 (latest LTS).

NetStandard 2.1 is the minimum version going forward.

In services that use IFlurlClient, the IFlurlClientFactory will be replaced with the new IArkFlurlClientFactory. The difference in services is that now the flurl clients must be manually disposed after use by implementing IDisposable. An example implementation can be found in the WebApplicationDemo in the PostService.

*Note: To continue using Newtonsoft as the json serializer, there is a param useNewtonsoftJson in the IArkFlurlClientFactory.Get() method.

In the TestHost for initializing tests that use Flurl, we now use ArkFlurlClientFactory as the factory. To connect to the test server we extend the DefaultFlurlClientFactory as such:

{
    private readonly TestServer _server;

    public TestServerfactory(TestServer server)
    {
        _server = server;
    }

    public override HttpMessageHandler CreateInnerHandler()
    {
        return _server.CreateHandler();
    }
}

We then initialize the factory:

_factory = new ArkFlurlClientFactory(new TestServerfactory(_server.GetTestServer()));

We then register the factor as usual:

ctx.ScenarioContainer.RegisterFactoryAs<IFlurlClient>(c => _factory.Get(_baseUri));

An example can be found in the TestProject under TestHost.

Rebus has been upgraded to v8.

1. There is a Breaking Change on SecondLevelRetries where IFailed<T> no longer has the Exception object, but a serialization friendly ExceptionInfo. Use exceptionInfo.ToException() to obtain an exception: do note that the original StackTrace is in the Exception.Message and not in the Exception.StackTrace.
2. The UseAzureServiceBusNativeDeliveryCount() is deprecated in favor of native support by Rebus. Migrate to UseAzureServiceBus(...).UseNativeMessageDeliveryCount().

In v4.5 has been revisited the NLog integration and helpers to make use of new features present in NLog v5.

The best way to configure NLog is

    Host.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
        .ConfigureNLog()
        .ConfigureServices(...)
    ;

is equivalent to

    .ConfigureLogging((ctx,l) =>
    {
        var appName = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().GetName().Name;
        NLogConfigurer
            .For(appName)
            // Load default settings from IConfiguration
            .WithDefaultTargetsAndRulesFromConfiguration(ctx.Configuration)
            .Apply();

        l.ClearProviders(); // remove all Microsoft providers
        l.AddNLog(); // sink all Microsoft.Logging logs to NLog
    })

.WithDefaultTargetsAndRulesFromAppSettings() and .WithDefaultTargetsAndRulesFromCloudSettings() exists for older Configuration sources.

The NLog auto-configurer expect the following settings:

• NLog.Database for SQL Server target. The table name is passed in as paramter to the configuration extension method.
• NLog.Smtp for the Mail target
  • NLog:NotificationList for the receipient address.
  • NEW The sender address is taken from Smtp connection string ;From=noreply@example.com or from .ConfigureNLog(mailfrom:"me@myapp.com") (defaults to noreply@ark-energy.eu)
• NLog:SlackWebHook for the Slack target. By default only Fatal and LoggerName=Slack.* are sent.
• APPINSIGHTS_INSTRUMENTATIONKEY or ApplicationInsights:InstrumentationKey for the ApplicationInsights target. By default only >=Error are sent.

Logging represent a non trivial part of the CPU consumption of a running Assembly: strings are bad, concateneting them is costly. Log Messages are also generally structured to present some context variables which are of interest.

NLog@v4.5 introduced StructuredLogging template support. Ark.Tools@v4.5 (same version, just a coincidence...) supports writing these captured properties in ApplicationInsights and Database Targets.

StructuredLogging is also more performant of string interpolation: string interpolation ($"Message {variable}") SHALL NOT be used for Logging! String interpolation is always performed even usually disabled levels like Trace or Debug causing a performance loss. Additionally the variables are not captured and cannot be used for log analysis querying the JSON fields.

// BAD
_logger.Info($"Logon by {user} from {ip_address}");

// GOOD
_logger.Info("Logon by {user} from {ip_address}", user, ip_address); // ordered by position

Starting Ark.Tools@v4.4 there is support for Logging to Slack via WebHook.

The Configuration auto-loaders like WithDefaultTargetsAndRulesFromConfiguration() looks for a NLog:SlackWebHook and if non-empty configure to send Logs as chat message to Slack. The default Rules are either:

• LoggerName="Slack.*" (created via _slackLogger = LogManager.CreateLogger("Slack.MyStuff");)
• Level==Fatal

Starting Ark.Tools@v4.5 there is support for Logging to ApplicationInsights.

The Configuration auto-loaders like WithDefaultTargetsAndRulesFromConfiguration() looks for the Microsoft's default settings like APPINSIGHTS_INSTRUMENTATIONKEY and ApplicationInsights:InstrumentationKey.

The default Rules to log any Error or Fatal to ApplicationInsights, including any Exception and StructuredLogging properties.

• BREAKING: Microsoft.AspNetCore v5
  • change netcoreapp3.1 to net5.0 on all projects referencing Ark.Tools.AspNetCore.* projects
• BREAKING: from System.Data.SqlClient to Microsoft.Data.SqlClient
  • remove any Nuget reference to System.Data.SqlClient and replace, where needed, with Microsoft.Data.SqlClient
• BREAKING: upgraded to Flurl v3
  • most usages should be fine, but those that expected Flurl method to return a HttpMessageResponse, as not returns IFlurlResponse Disposable!
• BREAKING: change to AspNetCore base Startup on RegisterContainer()
  • RegisterContainer() no longer takes IApplicationBuilder parameter but a IServiceProvider as the Container registration has been moved during ConfigureServices()
  • this affects mostly those cases where IServiceProvider was used to check for Tests overrides of mocked services
  • Use IHostEnvironment or services.HasService if possible instead of relying on IServiceProvider
• BREAKING: change to AspNetCore Startups. Now defaults to System.Text.Json instead of Newtonsoft.Json.
  • Use the parameter useNewtonsoftJson: true of base ctor to keep old behaviour
  • Migrate from the Ark.Tools.SystemTextJson.JsonPolymorphicConverter instead of Ark.Tools.NewtonsoftJson.JsonPolymorphicConverter

Feel free to send PRs or to raise issues if you spot them. We try our best to improve our libraries. Please avoid adding more dependencies to 3rd party libraries.

• Nuget
• Github
• Ark Energy

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

A part of this code is taken from StackOverflow or blogs or example. Where possible we included reference to original links but if you spot some missing Acknolegment please open an Issue right away.