Seelan's Tyres

Solution	Build Status
Main
SeelansTyres-Frontends-HealthChecksUISolution
SeelansTyres-Frontends-MvcSolution
SeelansTyres-FunctionApps-SystemDegradedTogglerSolution
SeelansTyres-Gateways-WebBffSolution
SeelansTyres-Services-AddressServiceSolution
SeelansTyres-Services-IdentityServiceSolution
SeelansTyres-Services-OrderServiceSolution
SeelansTyres-Services-TyresServiceSolution

What's the purpose of this project?

This project is a rewrite of my original college project which - compared to this - was very poorly written and insecure

Originally, it was written using PHP. This is written using C# on .NET 6 and 9

It's also rewritten to utilize my Azure and DevOps skills since I had earned Microsoft's Azure Certifications and needed a way to prove my skills with a project

View the AZ-400 that I prepared for and took here

As of right now, the solution is completed locally, and in Azure

Scroll down to the Demos section to see it in Azure

Initially I intended to make it cloud-native but I'd rather have it cloud-ready since "native" means it only runs in the cloud

The definition of "cloud-native" seems to be up for debate from what I've seen and it makes sense as to why it is one

NOTE: Since this project is a proof-of-concept, the payment system isn't integrated

NOTE: A Wiki is now available on how the solution is built, ensure to have a look at it 🥹

Architecture

Where it started

In the beginning, it was a distributed monolith with a frontend and backend API with a single database shared between both the projects

Where it is

The API has been broken down into microservices which then invited a backend-for-frontend to have a single point of entry into the microservices from the frontend

The solution now comprises of 10 runnable projects with 18 projects in total

Features

Website features

• A very simple and easy to navigate user interface
• An Admin Portal protected by ASP.NET Core Identity
  • Admin Portal features:
    • View the database structure [even though it's split]
    • Add and update tyre catalog with the ability to add and update images
    • View undelivered orders and mark them as delivered
    • View the receipt of an order
  • Related commits:
    • admin: efficiently use the partial view for the tyres table
    • implement functionality to add tyres
    • implement functionality for updating tyres
    • implement the logic for the shopping cart and the placing of orders
    • implement the viewing of orders in the admin portal
    • implement the viewing of receipts from the admin portal
    • admin portal: use restful routing for updating a tyre
    • add a missing feature to set the tyre's availability and adjust what customers see accordingly
    • create an image service
    • azure: implement the cloud version of the image service
    • the blob client has the uri 😐
• A custom footer with a link to the commit on GitHub referencing the version its built on
  • Related commits:
    • update the footer to include the version and a link to the commit in github
• Customers can perform updates to their account, add addresses, view their previous orders, reset their password and delete their account
  • Related commits:
    • implement the logic for addresses in the account
    • fix the post request for add new address
    • implement the logic for the shopping cart and the placing of orders
    • implement the viewing of orders on the account
    • account: ensure a customer makes their first address a preferred one
    • implement the functionality to reset password
• An email service that sends emails with FluentEmail using embedded razor templates
  • Emails sent:
    • A receipt when a user completes an order
    • Sends the user a token to reset their password
  • Related commits:
    • :D send an email when a customer completes an order
    • implement the functionality to reset password

Security features

• The entire architecture is protected using IdentityServer4
  • Related commits:
    • implement identityserver4
    • implement an api gateway with ocelot
    • cleanup the token exchange logic
• User login session management
• Hybrid-encryption for customer data on POST and PUT requests
  • Related commits:
    • secure the customers api with hybrid encryption
    • make some slight improvements
    • prep for containerization and orchestration locally
    • cryptography: remove hmac computation
• Custom authorization requirements and policies for customers and the administrator. Customers can only access their own data
  • Related commits:
    • implement identityserver4
    • authorization: fix the issue of the role claim missing in the access token

API features

• Utilizing the repository pattern to access the database and perform CRUD operations
• AutoMapper is used to map between database entities and models returned to the client
• Using middleware to return a ProblemDetails model when a non-success status code is returned
  • Related commits:
    • improve the error responses returned from the microservices
• Protected by IdentityServer4 and custom authorization policies
  • Related commits:
    • implement identityserver4
• [WIP] An efficient API versioning strategy
  • Related commits:
    • resolve some of the duplication
    • cleanup: centralize models-library using statements in a globalusings.cs file
    • models: align with the semver versioning strategy and introduce model wrappers
    • models: allow backwards compatibility
    • models: introduce a static class called AvailableModels that's tied to a version of the models and allow the model type to be specified in the model wrapper
    • models: the model version doesn't need to be static

Architecture features

• An API Gateway to have a single point of entry into the microservices as exposing the APIs to the world without it is not a best practice
  • Related commits:
    • implement an api gateway with ocelot
• Effectively dealing with cross-cutting concerns like logging and distributed tracing
  • Related commits:
    • prep for centralized logging with serilog and elasticsearch
    • the days and nights were long and so too, was the logging spree
    • containerize and MOSTLY orchestrate the solution locally
    • centralize the logging configuration in a shared library
    • implement rabbitmq and complete the architecture locally
    • implement a more correct way to maintain distributed tracing over a message bus
    • okay, duplication is a bit too high
• The codebase version with a link to the commit on GitHub is used to enrich the logs. This is useful in the following ways:
  • Tracing back to new code that's causing failures to occur
  • In a system where security is a priority, if a developer goes rogue and decides to allow fraud to occur by modifying the code, it can be traced back to them and can be under investigation
    • CODE REVIEWS ARE IMPORTANT
  • Related commits:
    • prep for centralized logging with serilog and elasticsearch
• An efficient data synchronization strategy across microservices
  • Related commits:
    • implement rabbitmq and complete the architecture locally
    • rework how updates are published by making it more resilient to failure
    • azure: implement the cloud version of pub-sub
• Site Reliability Engineering possibilities like creating an actionable alerting strategy and monitoring application health
  • Related commits:
    • the days and nights were long and so too, was the logging spree
    • communicate to users that the system is degraded
    • implement application health checks
    • enable the system degraded state by default when using docker compose
    • implement liveness checks
    • perform the liveness checks from the health checks ui
    • azure: instrument the solution with application insights telemetry
    • overhaul the existing health checks
    • implement environment specific health checks
    • azure: implement the system-degraded toggler azure function app

Codebase / Build System features

• An easy-to-maintain codebase that's polyrepo-ready
  • Related commits:
    • restructure and reorganize the entire solution
• A build system optimized with CMake to make the local building and running of the solution seamless
  • Related commits:
    • containerize and MOSTLY orchestrate the solution locally
    • cmake: templatize the run script
    • cmake: make the configure files more maintainable
    • cmake: templatize the copying of publish files
    • cmake: templatize runall.cmd
    • cmake: templatize the publishing of a project
• All projects are versioned according to the codebase version
• Little (unavoidable) technical debt due to necessary code duplication
• Sonarcloud is used to provide feedback on technical debt to which I take and clean up the solution
  • Related commits:
    • integrate sonarcloud

Resources that helped me skill up to rewrite this project

Textbooks

• C# 10 and .NET 6 [Paperback]
  • Author: Mark J. Price

Pluralsight

Paths

• Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions (AZ-400)
  • Authors: John Savill | David Tucker | Neil Morrissey | Marcel de Vries | Chris Behrens | Adam Bertram | Daniel Krzyczkowski
• Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure (AZ-204)
  • Authors: Matthew Kruczek | Anthony Nocentino | Mike Pfeiffer | Mark Heath | David Tucker | Thomas Claudius Huber | Sahil Malik | Reza Salehi | James Millar | Daniel Krzyczkowski | Matthew Soucoup
• ASP.NET Microservices
  • Authors: Antonio Goncalves | Roland Guijt | Gill Cleeren | Neil Morrissey | Kevin Dockx | Mark Heath | Marcel de Vries | Steve Gordan | Rag Dhiman
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
  • Author: Anthony Nocentino

Individual courses

• Building a Web App with ASP.NET Core 5, MVC, Entity Framework Core, Bootstrap, and Angular
  • Author: Shawn Wildermuth
• ASP.NET Core 6 Web API Fundamentals
  • Author: Kevin Dockx
• ASP.NET Core 6 Fundamentals
  • Author: Gill Cleeren
• Your Microservices Transition
  • Author: Rag Dhiman
• Microservices Architecture: The Design Principles
  • Author: Rag Dhiman
• Securing ASP.NET Core 3 with OAuth2 and OpenID Connect
  • Author: Kevin Dockx
• Cryptography in .NET 6
  • Author: Stephen Haunts
• Logging and Monitoring in ASP.NET Core 6
  • Author: Erik Dahl
• RabbitMQ by Example
  • Author: Stephen Haunts
• Building ASP.NET Core 3 Hosted Services and .NET Core 3 Worker Services
  • Author: Steve Gordan
• Fundamentals of Docker and Kubernetes for .NET 5 Developers
  • Author: Erik Dahl
• Deploying ASP.NET Core 6 Using Kubernetes
  • Author: Marcel de Vries
• Securing ASP.NET Core 6 with OAuth2 and OpenID Connect
  • Author: Kevin Dockx
• Deploying Azure Resources Using Bicep
  • Author: Ben Weissman
• The IT Ops Sessions: ARM Templates vs. Terraform
  • Author: Tim Warner
• ASP.NET Core 6 Performance
  • Author: Erik Dahl
• Documenting an ASP.NET Core 6 Web API Using Swagger
  • Author: Kevin Dockx
• Globalization and Internationalization in .NET 6
  • Author: Filip Ekberg

Whizlabs

• Exam AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions
  • Author: ???

YouTube

Channels

• John Savill's Technical Training
  • Author: John Savill

Videos

• Sending Email in C# using FluentEmail
  • Author: IAmTimCorey
• Intro to Health Checks in .NET Core
  • Author: IAmTimCorey
• Intro to Redis in C# - Caching Made Easy
  • Author: IAmTimCorey
• RabbitMQ Custom Docker Image with Custom Configuration and Definitions
  • Author: Mike Møller Nielsen
• Leveling up data: Upgrade from EF6 to EF7 and blast off! | .NET Conf 2022
  • Author: dotnet
• Authoring and deploying Azure resources with Bicep | Azure Friday
  • Author: Microsoft Azure

Docs, forums and articles

• Microsoft Learn
• Stack Overflow [Obviously]
• How export or import RabbitMQ configuration
• Docker Security Cheat Sheet

Required local setup to build and run

• Visual Studio 2022 17.12.1 or later
• Latest .NET SDK 6 and 9
• CMake 3.29.0 or later
• An Instance of SQL Server 2022 Express [Default, not named]
• SQL Server Management Studio
• WSL 1.0.3 [this is the version that I stick to because the Docker Engine fails to start on anything newer]
• Docker Desktop
• PowerToys 0.77.0 or later [For the hosts file editor and environment variables utility]

Build instructions

• Ensure to set environment variables listed in the RequiredEnvironmentVariables.txt file

  • Press 🪟 and search for Edit environment variables for your account
  • When setting this for the first time, restart your computer

• All build scripts are in the scripts folder

• In order to build, I've provided four options for you:

  • build.cmd which is the regular build
  • build-with-docker.cmd to run with docker-compose
  • build-with-services.cmd which is the regular build + elasticsearch, kibana and rabbitmq orchestrated with docker-compose
  • Kubernetes:
    • All scripts for Kubernetes are in the scripts/kubernetes folder and should be run in order
      • 00-applied-once.cmd
        • Note: This adds the nginx ingress to the cluster from the original repo
      • 01-build-images.cmd
      • 02-deploy.cmd
      • 03-delete.cmd

• NOTE: For Docker builds, run the pull-required-docker-images.cmd script beforehand

• Once you run either build.cmd or build-with-services.cmd, CMake will generate run-all.cmd

• Thereafter, run run-all.cmd which will start all applications minimized and launch the site, simulating orchestration

Demos

Setting up Kibana and demonstrating distributed tracing

Solution in Azure

Setting up https locally