NuGet distribution vehicles:

1Installed with Visual Studio 2019 with .NET Core workload 

The latest round of layoffs in Microsoft’s Windows Phone business— 1,850 jobs will be cut, according to an announcement earlier this week—seems to signal the final death gasp of a segment of the company’s business that has long struggled. Windows phones currently make up less than one percent of smartphones sold worldwide. 

In this post I will describe how to get most out of the newest version Entity Framework v 2.2 to support pure domain modeling as much as possible. 

Today, the Entity Framework Core team announces the fifth preview release of EF Core 6.0. This release includes the first iteration of compiled models.  

The Visual Studio team is excited about the Unity 2018.1 release: It’s the start of a new release cycle packed with great new features like the Scriptable Render Pipeline and the C# Job System. You can read the full blog post by Unity for all the details on what’s new in the 2018.1 release. 

.NotSupportedException: The method 'Max' is not supported

To be clear: this is not Silverlight. This is, in fact, a re-implementation of Silverlight that uses Web Assembly instead of browser plugins to achieve its goals.

SELECT
    [Id], 
    (SELECT top 1  * FROM  [AppUsers] FOR XML auto),
    HASHBYTES ('SHA2_256', (SELECT top 1  * FROM  [AppUsers] FOR XML auto)) AS [hash] -- varbinary(n), since 2012
FROM
    [AppUsers]

using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace EFCoreRowIntegrity
{
    public interface IAuditableEntity
    {
        string Hash { set; get; }
    }

    public static class AuditableShadowProperties
    {
        public static readonly string CreatedDateTime = nameof(CreatedDateTime);
        public static readonly string ModifiedDateTime = nameof(ModifiedDateTime);
    }

    public class Blog : IAuditableEntity
    {
        public int BlogId { get; set; }
        public string Url { get; set; }

        public List<Post> Posts { get; set; }

        public string Hash { get; set; }
    }

    public class Post : IAuditableEntity
    {
        public int PostId { get; set; }
        public string Title { get; set; }
        public string Content { get; set; }

        public int BlogId { get; set; }
        public Blog Blog { get; set; }

        public string Hash { get; set; }
    }
}

using System.Collections.Generic;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.ChangeTracking;

namespace EFCoreRowIntegrity
{
    public class AuditEntry
    {
        public EntityEntry EntityEntry { set; get; }
        public IList<AuditProperty> AuditProperties { set; get; } = new List<AuditProperty>();

        public AuditEntry() { }

        public AuditEntry(EntityEntry entry)
        {
            EntityEntry = entry;
        }
    }

    public class AuditProperty
    {
        public string Name { set; get; }
        public object Value { set; get; }

        public bool IsTemporary { set; get; }
        public PropertyEntry PropertyEntry { set; get; }

        public AuditProperty() { }

        public AuditProperty(string name, object value, bool isTemporary, PropertyEntry property)
        {
            Name = name;
            Value = value;
            IsTemporary = isTemporary;
            PropertyEntry = property;
        }
    }
}

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.ChangeTracking;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace EFCoreRowIntegrity
{
    public static class HashingExtensions
    {
        public static string GenerateObjectHash(this object @object)
        {
            if (@object == null)
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }

            var jsonData = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(@object, Formatting.Indented);
            using (var hashAlgorithm = new SHA256CryptoServiceProvider())
            {
                var byteValue = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(jsonData);
                var byteHash = hashAlgorithm.ComputeHash(byteValue);
                return Convert.ToBase64String(byteHash);
            }
        }

        public static string GenerateEntityEntryHash(this EntityEntry entry, string propertyToIgnore)
        {
            var auditEntry = new Dictionary<string, object>();
            foreach (var property in entry.Properties)
            {
                var propertyName = property.Metadata.Name;
                if (propertyName == propertyToIgnore)
                {
                    continue;
                }
                auditEntry[propertyName] = property.CurrentValue;
            }
            return auditEntry.GenerateObjectHash();
        }

        public static string GenerateEntityHash<TEntity>(this DbContext context, TEntity entity, string propertyToIgnore)
        {
            return context.Entry(entity).GenerateEntityEntryHash(propertyToIgnore);
        }
    }
}

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.ChangeTracking;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;

namespace EFCoreRowIntegrity
{
    public class BloggingContext : DbContext
    {
        public BloggingContext()
        { }

        public BloggingContext(DbContextOptions options)
            : base(options)
        { }

        public DbSet<Blog> Blogs { get; set; }
        public DbSet<Post> Posts { get; set; }

        protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
        {
            if (!optionsBuilder.IsConfigured)
            {
                optionsBuilder.EnableSensitiveDataLogging();
                var path = Path.Combine(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), "app_data", "EFCore.RowIntegrity.mdf");
                optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer($"Server=(localdb)\\mssqllocaldb;Database=EFCore.RowIntegrity;AttachDbFilename={path};Trusted_Connection=True;");
                optionsBuilder.UseLoggerFactory(new LoggerFactory().AddConsole((message, logLevel) =>
                logLevel == LogLevel.Debug &&
                           message.StartsWith("Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Database.Command")));
            }
        }

        protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
        {
            base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder);

            foreach (var entityType in modelBuilder.Model
                                                   .GetEntityTypes()
                                                   .Where(e => typeof(IAuditableEntity)
                                                   .IsAssignableFrom(e.ClrType)))
            {
                modelBuilder.Entity(entityType.ClrType)
                            .Property<DateTimeOffset?>(AuditableShadowProperties.CreatedDateTime);
                modelBuilder.Entity(entityType.ClrType)
                            .Property<DateTimeOffset?>(AuditableShadowProperties.ModifiedDateTime);
            }
        }

        public override int SaveChanges()
        {
            var auditEntries = OnBeforeSaveChanges();
            var result = base.SaveChanges();
            OnAfterSaveChanges(auditEntries);
            return result;
        }

        private IList<AuditEntry> OnBeforeSaveChanges()
        {
            var auditEntries = new List<AuditEntry>();

            foreach (var entry in ChangeTracker.Entries<IAuditableEntity>())
            {
                if (entry.State == EntityState.Detached || entry.State == EntityState.Unchanged)
                {
                    continue;
                }

                var auditEntry = new AuditEntry(entry);
                auditEntries.Add(auditEntry);

                var now = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow;

                foreach (var property in entry.Properties)
                {
                    var propertyName = property.Metadata.Name;
                    if (propertyName == nameof(IAuditableEntity.Hash))
                    {
                        continue;
                    }

                    if (property.IsTemporary)
                    {
                        // It's an auto-generated value and should be retrieved from the DB after calling the base.SaveChanges().
                        auditEntry.AuditProperties.Add(new AuditProperty(propertyName, null, true, property));
                        continue;
                    }

                    switch (entry.State)
                    {
                        case EntityState.Added:
                            entry.Property(AuditableShadowProperties.CreatedDateTime).CurrentValue = now;
                            auditEntry.AuditProperties.Add(new AuditProperty(propertyName, property.CurrentValue, false, property));
                            break;
                        case EntityState.Modified:
                            auditEntry.AuditProperties.Add(new AuditProperty(propertyName, property.CurrentValue, false, property));
                            entry.Property(AuditableShadowProperties.ModifiedDateTime).CurrentValue = now;
                            break;
                    }
                }
            }

            return auditEntries;
        }

        private void OnAfterSaveChanges(IList<AuditEntry> auditEntries)
        {
            foreach (var auditEntry in auditEntries)
            {
                foreach (var auditProperty in auditEntry.AuditProperties.Where(x => x.IsTemporary))
                {
                    // Now we have the auto-generated value from the DB.
                    auditProperty.Value = auditProperty.PropertyEntry.CurrentValue;
                    auditProperty.IsTemporary = false;
                }
                auditEntry.EntityEntry.Property(nameof(IAuditableEntity.Hash)).CurrentValue =
                    auditEntry.AuditProperties.ToDictionary(x => x.Name, x => x.Value).GenerateObjectHash();
            }
            base.SaveChanges();
        }
    }
}

public override int SaveChanges()
{
    var auditEntries = OnBeforeSaveChanges();
    var result = base.SaveChanges();
    OnAfterSaveChanges(auditEntries);
    return result;
}

if (property.IsTemporary)
{
   // It's an auto-generated value and should be retrieved from the DB after calling the base.SaveChanges().
   auditEntry.AuditProperties.Add(new AuditProperty(propertyName, null, true, property));
   continue;
}

private static void CheckRow1IsAuthentic()
{
    using (var context = new BloggingContext())
    {
        var blog1 = context.Blogs.Single(x => x.BlogId == 1);
        var entityHash = context.GenerateEntityHash(blog1, propertyToIgnore: nameof(IAuditableEntity.Hash));
        var dbRowHash = blog1.Hash;
        Console.WriteLine($"entityHash: {entityHash}\ndbRowHash:  {dbRowHash}");
        if (entityHash == dbRowHash)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("This row is authentic!");
        }
        else
        {
            Console.WriteLine("This row is tampered outside of the application!");
        }
    }
}

entityHash: P110cYquWpoaZuTpCWaqBn6HPSGdoQdmaAN05s1zYqo=
dbRowHash: P110cYquWpoaZuTpCWaqBn6HPSGdoQdmaAN05s1zYqo=
This row is authentic!

entityHash: tdiZhKMJRnROGLLam1WpldA0fy/CbjJaR2Y2jNU9izk=
dbRowHash: P110cYquWpoaZuTpCWaqBn6HPSGdoQdmaAN05s1zYqo=
This row is tampered outside of the application!

var blogs = (from blog in context.Blogs.ToList() // Note: this `ToList()` is necessary here for having Shadow properties values, otherwise they will considered `null`.
             let computedHash = context.GenerateEntityHash(blog, nameof(IAuditableEntity.Hash))
             select new
             {
               blog.BlogId,
               blog.Url,
               RowHash = blog.Hash,
               ComputedHash = computedHash,
               IsAuthentic = blog.Hash == computedHash
             }).ToList();

Last year a team of six researchers in Portugal from three different universities decided to investigate this question, ultimately releasing a paper titled “Energy Efficiency Across Programming Languages.”