Mark Smith — Portfolio

A personal portfolio and playground built with Blazor Server on .NET 10, deployed to Azure. It's part CV, part side-project showcase — live API integrations, a dark/light mode toggle, and a handful of genuinely useful dashboards rather than lorem-ipsum filler content.

Live: marksmith-portfolio.azurewebsites.net

---

Pages

Page	What it does
Home	Hero intro, quick stats, links to the rest
Projects	GitHub repos pulled live from the API + side-project cards
Skills	Work history timeline, education, tech badges
Contact	Email form (SMTP via Gmail app password)
NASA APOD	Astronomy Picture of the Day — date picker + random
SpaceX	Upcoming & past launches with mission patch images
Weather	Current conditions for a few cities, °C/°F toggle
F1 Dashboard	Driver standings, constructor standings, last race results, calendar — season selector

---

Tech Stack

• Blazor Server — .NET 10, C#
• Bootstrap 5 + custom CSS design system (CSS variables, dark mode)
• Font Awesome icons
• IMemoryCache — thread-safe, TTL-based caching across all services
• DotNetEnv — .env file for local secrets (API keys)
• Azure App Service — hosting
• GitHub Actions — CI/CD (build + deploy on push to master)

External APIs used

API	Auth	Used for
GitHub REST API	None (public)	Projects page repos
NASA APOD	API key (env var)	NASA page
SpaceX API (r/SpaceX)	None	SpaceX page
Jolpica / Ergast F1	None	F1 Dashboard
Weather API	API key (env var)	Weather page

---

Running Locally

Prerequisites: .NET 10 SDK

git clone https://github.com/marksmith1994/MyPortfolio.git
cd MyPortfolio

Create a .env file in the project root:

Nasa__ApiKey=your_nasa_key
Weather__ApiKey=your_weather_key
Email__GmailAddress=you@gmail.com
Email__GmailPassword=your_gmail_app_password
GitHub__Token=your_github_pat

The double-underscore (__) maps to the : separator in ASP.NET Core's configuration system (e.g. Nasa__ApiKey → Nasa:ApiKey). Azure App Service application settings follow the same convention.

Then run:

dotnet run

• NASA and Weather API keys are free — get them at api.nasa.gov and weatherapi.com.
• GitHub__Token is optional but recommended — without it the GitHub API is limited to 60 requests/hour per IP; a personal access token (read-only, public repos scope) raises this to 5,000/hour.
• Email__GmailPassword should be a Gmail app password, not your account password.

---

Project Structure

MyPortfolio/
├── Components/
│   ├── Layout/          # MainLayout, NavMenu
│   ├── Pages/           # One .razor file per page
│   └── Shared/          # Timeline, LoadingSkeleton, etc.
├── Services/            # One service per API (models co-located)
├── wwwroot/
│   ├── css/             # base.css + per-page CSS files
│   ├── js/              # theme.js (dark/light toggle)
│   └── data/            # skills-data.json
├── plan/
│   └── TODO.md          # Ongoing improvement backlog
└── .github/workflows/   # GitHub Actions CI/CD

---

Deployment

Every push to master triggers the GitHub Actions workflow:

1. Build with dotnet build --configuration Release
2. Publish with dotnet publish
3. Deploy to Azure App Service (marksmith-portfolio) via OIDC (no stored credentials)