I was recently porting a .Net 4.6.2 C# Scheduler app to .Net core 1.0.1 Cent OS.7 64 bit machine in Azure and I’ve learned a good lesson especially with HttpClient API. I will be mainly focusing some of the issues I’ve encountered with .Net Core HttpClient library in Linux platform in this article.
As I mentioned above, Initially this app was targeting to .NetFramework Windows server and later I ported to Linux. Once after the app has been deployed to Azure Linux I was getting the following issues.
NOTE : Most of the issues I am talking here did not show up in Windows platform (Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2).
1) AppDomain & Unhanded exceptions
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException += UnhandledException;
The above one liner code for handling UnhandledException exception doesn’t work .Netcore 1.0 or 1.1. AppDomain class supports started from .NET Framework 1.1, however this was removed in .NetCore due to performance issue and other reasons here , here and here which is fine I am totally agree the point. However, it would be great if they have alternate solution for handling Unhanded exception. Hoping this would get added in .Net Core 2.0 release.
2) ServicePointManager
In .Net core there is no ServicePointManager class instead use base HttpHandler class and If you are on Windows use WinHttpHanlder and non windows platform make sure to use HttpClientHandler to call the method and properties like below.
var handler = new HttpClientHandler
{
AllowAutoRedirect = false;
AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.Deflate | DecompressionMethods.GZip;
};
handler.ServerCertificateCustomValidationCallback += (sender, cert, chain, sslPolicyErrors) => true;
3) PlatformNotSupportedException for ServerCertificateCustomValidationCallback
One of the common error you might encounter while using .Net core or Net standard in non windows platform is PlatformNotSupportedException. Hopefully they are going to address this in 2.0 versions. ServerCertificateCustomValidationCallback works fine in windows. However, by default this won’t work in Linux and MAC OS unless the libcurl library point to OpenSSL. I have opened a github issue https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/17045 and .Net corefx team was provided some solution to address the issue. Unfortunately there are no documentation explains these kind of issues.
The libcurl library in use (7.29.0) and its
SSL backend ("NSS/3.19.1 Basic ECC") do not support custom handling of certificates.
A libcurl built with OpenSSL is required.
4) System.Net.Http.HttpRequestException: The server returned an invalid or unrecognized response.
I have encountered this exception lately and I opened a new github issue https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/17558 and the corefx team planing to address this issue in 2.0.
Summary
Porting to .net core app is really great experience and good learning curve for the new platform. I would definitely recommend to check .NET Portability Analyzer to find out how much libraries and APIs are supporting to .Net Core. Also, follow github issue tracker for .Net Corefx repository.
References / Tools –
https://apisof.net/
http://packagesearch.azurewebsites.net/
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ConnieYau.NETPortabilityAnalyzer
Deepu Madhusoodanan's Blog 