The Future of Restier & A Call for Contributors

[robertmclaws]

Now that @mikepizzo has let everyone know that the project is moving forward, we need to put together a plan for getting v1 released as quickly as possible. This post will outline the release plan and schedule once we've come up with it, and @cwoodruff and I will keep it updated so everyone can understand the plan.

In the meantime, if you would like to be a part of the core team and can make the commitment to help get v1 polished for release, please react to this post with the heart emoji (not in a separate post, as I'd like to keep this thread clean for now).

Thanks, and I'm looking forward to helping finally get this thing out the door!

[BalintPogatsa]

Dear All,
Any updates about the v1 release?

[robertmclaws]

Yes. We're currently in the process of moving everything over to the .NET Foundation. As soon as they give me access to the Azure DevOps site for the project, I'll be able to configure an official Beta release. Then we have two outstanding issues to resolve that I consider showstoppers. Then we'll ship 1.0 RTM side-by-side with the next WebAPI release. Unfortunately, I don't have hard dates on that yet, but we're working on getting those dates hopefully by our next Standup on June 11th.

[Tiberriver256]

Will you guys be adding the stand up notes to the wiki?

[robertmclaws]

Yes, I'll get around to updating those at some point soon, likely after we've gotten releases out the door. In the meantime, there are new builds up in the nightly feed... fixes several issues that have plagued my projects for a while now. We're down to 21 outstanding issues... hoping to get 1.0 Beta 2 shipped very soon. Please update to latest and open an issue if you have any problems... would like to have a clean 1.0 release so we can move on to rewriting everything for .NET Core 3 and beyond.

Thanks!

[jspuij]

Any chance that somebody could put up a Microsoft Teams or Slack site? I'd like to discuss some stuff ;-)

[robertmclaws]

We're working to do that, but I need full access to the GitHub repo, and Mike is not back from vacation yet,

[weitzhandler]

You guys are totally awesome.
I just came here to say that I'm so grateful. Thanks for all of your hard work, and for the community stand-ups. ❤

[Emalsha]

Hi, I don't know is this relevant to post this question here. But since my question regards next release I ask it here. Recently I started new project (still learning) using .Net Core & EF Core (latest version). Then I realized as many tutorials described RESTier 0.6.0 doesn't work with them and then I found this issue. If I am correct I can use next RESTier version (According to milestone, suppose to release on Aug 21, 2019) with .Net Core & EF Core. Am I correct or wrong ?

(I'm still trying understand .Net technologies. If I am wrong please correct me.)

Thanks.

[robertmclaws]

Hey @Emalsha, and welcome to the community. We will not be supporting .NET Core until Restier 2.0. We still hope to ship 2.0 sometime this year. In the meantime, we will be publishing ways to architect your app so the front-end can still use .NET Core.

[Tiberriver256]

Hi any updates on the progress towards a release?

[jspuij]

New beta should be out any moment, there are some last minor issues with obtaining the right certificates to publish to nuget as part of the .NET foundation. But it should not be long now!

[weitzhandler]

I am not sure this is the right place and time to talk about it if at all (I'd be happy to open a new issue if appropriate), but it crossed my mind, since RESTier is going to be redesigned anyway, maybe it would be good to take into account a future potential implementation of RESTier.Client, that would be the client-side counterpart of RESTier and will work seamlessly with the server, and provide:

• Client side entity generation or recognition
• Querying
• Graph change tracking
• Saving changes to graph
• Interception and extensibility points to allow for:
  • Caching
  • Validation

I'm saying it so that when the server-side is redesigned, these and other aspects which may not be fully covered by OData specs should be given a thought.

And BTW, I'd be happy to take part and contribute to RESTier, as a former RIA Services and WCF consumer, RESTier is the ultimate replacement.

[weitzhandler]

Actually, I now see I've posted an issue about it before I knew about RESTier: OData/odata.net#1508.

[robertmclaws]

Restier RC1 has been released! Please try out the bits from the Nightly Feed (we'll publish to NuGet.org this week, hopefully), and let us know if you have any issues.

[BlagoCuljak]

Hi guys, I've been following this repo for some time, my goal was to migrate from WCF Data Service to Odata .Net core, and this project seems like a good option.

Is the project goal of having 3.0 support in H1 2020 still possible? I don't see any new commits to or open issues, so wondering should I look somewhere else?

[jspuij]

@BlagoCuljak working on an EF Core / ASP.NET Core port:

https://github.com/jspuij/RESTier/tree/efcoredotnetcore

Will create a PR when done.

[vincedan]

@jspuij thanks. is target .net core version 3.1 or 5.0? is the related api the same as rc1?

[jspuij]

@jspuij thanks. is target .net core version 3.1 or 5.0? is the related api the same as rc1?

The API is the same, minus the service registration / configuration, which will be different on .net core because it is different anyway. (no HttpConfiguration class but IAppBuilder and IRouteBuilder)

The libraries are dual targeting, net472 and netstandard2.1. They will run on net4.7.2+ classic (ASP.NET classic and EF6) and on netstandard2.1 (ASP.NET core, EF core / EF6). runtime version for core is either 3.1 or 5.0. This follows more or less the same targets as OData 7.x

[vincedan]

@jspuij ，good news for us. thanks again.

[jspuij]

@BlagoCuljak @vincedan The eagle has landed ;-) We haven't created packages yet, but we would appreciate some feedback if you're willing to build from source. Once there are packages, usage will be a lot easier.

[vincedan]

glad to get your message, @jspuij ， thanks a lot. I am struggling in a hot project with my full strength. I will try to upgrade my existing service to .net 5 after this July.

[robertmclaws]

Hey everyone! As @jspuij said (and thanks to his tireless efforts), we have initial support for .NET Core 3.0 and .NET 5 checked into the repo. We need to upgrade the Breakdance testing framework we use to support ASP.NET Core, so we're not considering this production ready yet. But it does work on the Northwind database sample, which is also checked in.

Give us a couple weeks to get the Unit Tests ported, and we'll have proper binaries out. We're also finishing up the documentation so it can live on docs.microsoft.com along with the rest of OData.

We're in the home stretch of the 1.0 release folks. It's been a long road, so thank you all for your support and patience as we bring this giant-ass albatross in for a landing :D

[BlagoCuljak]

Hey guys,
Great to see the project is moving forward.

Does the project demo still works? How can we test it?

[cilerler]

@BlagoCuljak here are the two samples for the latest version

1. Microsoft.Restier.Samples.Northwind.AspNet
2. Microsoft.Restier.Samples.Northwind.AspNetCore

[BlagoCuljak]

Today, I managed to scaffold remote database to ef core, added some tables and views, for the time being, works like it should.

I will try tomorrow some more queries, loading bigger set of data, top and filter, and other stuff. But first impression, looks like a hell of a job. Reminds me of WCF data services, real simple and effective.

Have a good one.

[BlagoCuljak]

I didn't find some functionality issues, I only use OData to fetch data, so I didn't bother with Update/Delete... Adding a new table/view to EF, and I have something new to query without a new controller.

[robertmclaws]

Hey Everyone! Just wanted to let you all know we've released a new update to Restier, and have added support for running on AspNetCore 3.1 and 5.0. The supported configurations are now:

• ASP.NET Classic 4.7.2 or 4.8
• ASP.NET Core 3.1 or 5.0
• ASP.NET Classic 4.7.2 or 4.8 + Entity Framework 6
• ASP.NET Core 3.1 or 5.0 + Entity Framework 6
• ASP.NET Core 3.1 or 5.0 + Entity Framework Core

Please see the samples and tests for details on how to use these configurations.

In addition, we've made Breakdance the official test suite for Restier. Using Breakdance, you can create cross-runtime tests that bootstrap Restier configuration for you, using the recommended configurations for each ASP.NET platform.

We just upgraded https://burnrate.io to the new platform, and are seeing a 50% improvement in memory usage and response times!

The new packages are CI builds, so they are technically a downgrade from the RC builds. a simple version number find & replace should get you upgraded.

We have a few more unit tests to get fixed up, and then we'll be able to ship what we hope to be our last RC, hopefully within the next 3 weeks or so.

Check it out, and let us know if you run into any issues!

[BlagoCuljak]

Congrats to the entire Restier team!

[cilerler]

The new packages are CI builds, so they are technically a downgrade from the RC builds. a simple version number find & replace should get you upgraded.

If anyone needs it here is the latest NuGet package