Author Archives: andysprague44

Diagrams as Code – C4 diagrams with Azure icons

This article is very persuasive. By the end you will wonder why you ever used Visio. It gets more technical as you progress, so stop reading whenever you want (I suppose this is true whether I wrote this sentence or not). I discuss: Just want the code? https://bitbucket.org/andysprague44/sprague.andy.plantuml.c4 C4 C4 diagrams are a great wayContinue reading “Diagrams as Code – C4 diagrams with Azure icons”

Python – (Ab)Using Environments

So I recently picked up a legacy(ish) python application that had a CI/CD pipeline that built from a setup.py file (think: python setup.py build). I wanted to create a local dev environment using the only sensible choice (excluding docker) – conda. I also wanted to utilize an environment.yml file to give new developers a veryContinue reading “Python – (Ab)Using Environments”

Azure Table Storage – QueryAsync

Quick one today. I have been playing around with Azure Table Storage using the “WindowsAzure.Storage” library in dotnet, and was failing to find anything useful on querying multiple rows. Using the ‘TableContinuationToken’ was a little confusing to me, and a lot of the example on the net are out of date (who knows, this mayContinue reading “Azure Table Storage – QueryAsync”

Flask Blueprint for Microsoft Azure AAD Authentication

This blog post takes you through adding authentication to a Flask application, using a blueprint, connecting to Microsoft Azure AAD using MSAL Python library. The hope is, you can grab the blueprint, and drop it in to your flask application, authentication done bish-bash-bosh, and then spend your time doing the more interesting stuff. You won’tContinue reading “Flask Blueprint for Microsoft Azure AAD Authentication”

NetOffice.Excel – Add Validation to a Cell

My most recent blogs have been focused on Excel-DNA, and the pretty cool ability it brings to easily add your own custom ribbons.  This blog is looking at the other component of writing a C# app that can talk to Excel – namely NetOffice.Excel. NetOffice.Excel provides the ability to interact with Excel COM elements, inContinue reading “NetOffice.Excel – Add Validation to a Cell”

Custom Icons in Excel-DNA Custom Ribbon

When adding options to your menu, you’ll need icons.  There are about 9,000 already available icons (yikes!), so you’ll probably find one that is suitable and is consistent with the UX of Excel.  You can also add custom icons.  As always code is available on my bit bucket account: https://bitbucket.org/andysprague44/excel-dna-examples/…CustomImage Built-in icons You can addContinue reading “Custom Icons in Excel-DNA Custom Ribbon”

Show Message Boxes with Excel-DNA

Often a simple way to get user feedback is to show a pop-up message box.  Read on for a tutorial on how to do this.  As an example, this is the result we will get from this blog:   The second section of this blog deals with how to handle message boxes during asynchronous operations,Continue reading “Show Message Boxes with Excel-DNA”

Excel-DNA Custom Ribbon Cheat Sheet

In this blog I’ll give some helpful snippets of code to work with Custom Ribbons in Excel-DNA. I will assume you have already got a project that creates a custom ribbon, and you now want my amazing insight on how to add something that is more elaborate than, say, a button that writes a hard-codedContinue reading “Excel-DNA Custom Ribbon Cheat Sheet”

My First Custom Excel Ribbon using Excel-DNA

In this blog I give a tutorial on getting started with Excel-DNA, a project to build excel add-ins using .NET. By the end you will have a new custom tab in your excel ribbon that contains a button. I will also show you how to debug this excel plugin by running the project directly from Visual Studio