Redeveloping my Word Tutor spelling application using .Net Core 3.0.
Redeveloping WordTutor
WordTutor Revisted
2 Mar 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Let’s try an experiment - taking many of the things I’ve been blogging about over the past few years and applying them to the design and build of an actual application, with the source code published step by step.
Vocabulary Word
9 Mar 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
To begin our little project, we need to create our initial project structure. Once that’s in place, we can create the first class from our application model - VocabularyWord.
Vocabulary Set
16 Mar 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
After creating VocabularyWord last time, our next step is to create VocabularySet, a container for many words.
Application Model
23 Mar 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Now that we have both VocabularyWord and ‘VocabularySet`, we can turn our attention to defining application model itself, allowing us to capture the overall state of the entire application.
Commandline Builds
30 Mar 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Before we get much further in this project, we should set up command line builds while things are still simple. It’s easier to enhance the builds step by step as required than to configure a complex build system in one go.
Redux Store
6 Apr 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
At the core of the Redux design pattern is the store, a central place for storing the current state of the application. There’s only ever one store for the entire application. Changes in state are made by dispatching messages to the store that are processed by a reducer.
Static Analysis
13 Apr 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
I’ve long been a fan of static analysis tools. They can act as a co-pilot, keeping an eye on things while you work, helping you to catch common types of problems. Let’s add (and tune!) some tools.
WPF Projects & ViewModelBase
20 Apr 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Before we can start adding screens to our application, we need to set up some infrastructure for our WPF specific classes. In order to keep the WordTutor.Core technology independent, we’ll do this by creating a new project.
Add Word Screen
4 May 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Let’s look at the first of the screens we need to build for our application - the Add Word screen, used (surprisingly enough) to add a new word to the list of words we’re currently viewing.
Add Word View Model
11 May 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
With the add vocabulary word screen that we defined last time, we can now look at the implementation of the related view model.
Add Word View
25 May 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Leveraging the add vocabulary word view model from last time, we now turn our attention to creating the associated view. Once we have that, we can wire everything up into a working WPF application.
First Light
8 Jun 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
First light is the term used for the first time that an observation is made through a new telescope (or other astronomical instrument). Lets get our application up and running.
Revisiting ViewModelBase
15 Jun 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
When I went to write the code for our next view model (VocabularyBrowserViewModel), I ran into some problems with our original ViewModelBase. Let’s visit those problems and look at how they can be resolved.
Vocabulary Browser
29 Jun 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
For our second screen, we’ll create a browser to show all of the words in a single vocabulary list. Let’s start with a small bit of design, so we know what we’re aiming to build.
Restructuring Reducers
13 Jul 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
When I got to this point of the series, I expected to be writing about some interaction testing - checking that our messages triggered the right transitions between screens.
Integration Testing
20 Jul 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
testing
In addition to the unit tests we’re already writing for each of our core classes, we should also write some integration tests to ensure our types interact properly.
Dependency Injection: Core
27 Jul 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
To this point, we’ve been able to run each of our screens by hand-coding the necessary object initialization. We could continue this as we move forward, but the complexity would grow with each additional screen we complete. Instead, let’s take the time to configure a dependency injection framework that will take care of the complexity for us.
Dependency Injection: ViewModels
10 Aug 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Based on the foundation from last time, we can now turn our attention to our view-models. How can we use our dependency injection framework to construct each view model on demand?
Dependency Injection: Views
17 Aug 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
We saw last time that setting up dependency injection for our viewmodels involved a small number of moving parts. The same applies when applying dependency injection to our views, but with a few additional complexities.
Redux Subscriptions
25 Aug 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
One of the problems we currently have is caused by lack of updates - our application model can change without our view-models being notified that the change has happened, leaving our user interface showing stale information. To solve this, we’ll extend our Redux store with subscriptions, to allow each view-models to be proactively notified when things change.
ViewModel Subscriptions
31 Aug 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Now that our Redux store supports subscriptions, we can register to update our existing view models, allowing them to automatically stay current as our application state changes. The changes to each will be similar, but with a few variations on the common theme.
Debugging word selection
14 Sep 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
With subscriptions wired up to keep our view models updated, we can run our application and start clicking around. When we select a word, we can trace through the flow of messages to see how everything updates. But, it’s easy to crash. Let’s debug that crash and work out how to make the application more robust.
Commands and CommandBinding
21 Sep 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Up until this point, we’ve relied exclusively on data-binding for the link between our view-models and our views. While data-binding handles a lot of scenarios well, it doesn’t support buttons, menu items and so on.
C# 8 and .NET Core 3.0
28 Sep 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
It’s been a big week of releases in the world of .NET with the release of both .NET Core 3.0 and C# 8. Let’s upgrade the Wordtutor projects to all the latest versions and see what we learn.
Nullable types redux
12 Oct 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Continuing our the upgrade process from last time, in this post we’ll explore the changes required to our WordTutor.Desktop project.
Code Gardening
19 Oct 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Continuing on the theme from our past two posts, we’ll address the remaining issues related to nullable types, as well as taming the rest of our current storm of compiler warnings.
Hashcodes
26 Oct 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Here’s an odd warning that came up when I was working on last weeks Code Gardening post:
Modifying Words, Part the First
9 Nov 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
The existing model class ModifyVocabularyWordScreen only handles the creation of a new word. We need to modify it to support the modification of an existing word as well.
Modifying Words, Part the Second
16 Nov 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
If you’ve tried out our application as it stood after last week’s post, you may have noticed that the user experience for modifying a word is a bit suboptimal. After selecting a word, you have to separately press the Modify button. Can we do better?
Convention testing for immutable types
30 Nov 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
testing
The Redux architecture we’re using for our application state relies on all our state objects being properly immutable. So far, we’ve relied on nothing more than self-discipline to ensure no mistakes are made. By adding some convention testing to our project, we can enlist some help in avoiding common errors.
Wither convention testing
14 Dec 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
testing
Following on from our previous post on convention testing we can extend the conventions by considering the standards we want to follow when we write methods on our immutable types.
Logging
28 Dec 2019
wordtutor-redux
csharp
As we progress building the WordTutor application, some of the functionality will be a great deal more complex - and that requires a better way to see what’s happening inside the application than we’ve had to date. It’s time to implement some logging.
Logging Demonstrated
11 Jan 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
After earlier defining our logging interface, some readers posed a few questions about how it would work from a consumers perspective. So before we look at implementation details, let’s look at how we’ll instrument our code and what the output might look like.
Logging Implementation
25 Jan 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
To implement the logging interfaces described earlier, there are some issues we need to consider. There are two different usage patterns we need to support, plus we need to support concurrent use, and avoid code duplication.
Speech API
15 Feb 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
For the WordTutor application to work, we need to be able to read words (and letters) out loud to our student. To power the speech synthesis, we’re going to integrate Azure Cognitive Services into the application.
Redux Middleware
14 Mar 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
At this point in the development of the WordTutor, we need to properly incorporate speech generation into the application. We could hack and glue it into place on top of the existing architecture, or we can integrate it into the existing structure in a clean way.
Redux Middleware Implementation
28 Mar 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Based on the interfaces we defined last time, let’s integrate middleware functionality into our existing Redux store. This will lay the foundation we need for asynchronous speech generation.
Speech Middleware
11 Apr 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
Now that we’ve modified our Redux store to support middleware, we have the foundation needed to integrate speech synthesis into the main flow of our application.
Maintenance & Speech
18 Apr 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
wpf
With our speech infrastructure in place, our next step is to hook it up with our existing maintenance screen. This will allow our users to test out pronunciation as they make changes.
Caching Speech
25 Apr 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
If you’ve been playing around with maintenance screen and the speech integration that we completed last week you may have noticed that there can be a noticeable lag between the time you press a play button and when you hear the speech.
Improved Caching
9 May 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
After our recent introduction of caching, I had an interesting conversation with a friend about the way I’d written the code. He was persuasive that the approach I’d taken had some significant issues and that it was worth taking the time to address them.
Caching without Race Conditions
13 Jun 2020
wordtutor-redux
csharp
It wasn’t very long after my prior update on caching that a friend informed me that the code has a race condition. Yes, the same friend who persuaded me to update it last time. Worse, during a Skype call, we identified code that would outright fail for an independent reason.