Aspnet core-2-succinctly
1 like977 views
- ASP.NET Web Forms was Microsoft's first web framework for .NET, released in 2002, which abstracted away the complexity of web development but became difficult to update over time - ASP.NET MVC was released in 2009 to address Web Forms' issues and allow more control over HTML, but was still dependent on Windows - ASP.NET Web API provided a modular framework for building RESTful services independently of IIS - OWIN and Katana defined a standard for components in modern web apps and provided an OWIN-compliant web server, moving frameworks closer to independence from Windows
![18
Figure 3-2: dotnet CLI
Let's dive into what happened here.
The dotnet new command added two files to the folder:
• HelloWorldApp.csproj: an XML file containing the configuration of the project.
• Program.cs: the actual code file.
The Program.cs file is pretty simple; it just prints the Hello World! string to the console.
Code Listing 3-2
using System;
namespace HelloWorldApp
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
}
}
}](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-18-320.jpg)
![22
Looking at the Solution Explorer, notice that the folder structure and files are very different from
the previous version of ASP.NET. First of all, there is a wwwroot folder that contains all the
static files. In a different section, we will explain how to use the wwwroot folder and the reason
why you need it.
All files in the root of the project are either new additions or they changed their role:
• Program.cs is the entry point for the web application; everything starts from here. As
we mentioned in the previous chapters, the .NET Core host can only run console
applications. So, the web app is a console application too.
• project.csproj, where project is the name you provided in the creation wizard, is
an XML-based project configuration file. It contains all our package references and
some build configuration.
• Startup.cs is not exactly new. If you already used OWIN, you probably know the
role of this class, but we can definitely say if the Program.cs is the entry point of the
.NET Core app, Startup.cs is the entry point of the ASP.NET Core application
(previously we were using the global.asax file).
The WebApplication1.csproj file is not visible in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer window,
but you can easily see what’s inside by right-clicking on the project and selecting Edit
WebApplication1.csproj.
Program.cs
As mentioned before, this class is the entry point of the .NET Core application, and its role is to
create the host for the web application. Since we can host our web application on different web
servers with .NET Core, this is the right place to configure everything.
Code Listing 4-1
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup
{
public class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run();
}](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-22-320.jpg)
![23
public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[]
args) =>
WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
.UseStartup<Startup>();
}
}
As you can see, this class is simple, as the only important method is CreateDefaultBuilder,
which configures all the needed services for you. If you are already using ASP.NET Core 1.x (or
you read the previous edition of this book), you’ll notice that this class has changed significantly.
Startup.cs
The ASP.NET Core pipeline starts here, and, as you can see from the following code, almost
nothing comes with the template.
Code Listing 4-2
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup
{
public class Startup
{
// This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to
add services to the container.
// For more information on how to configure your application,
visit https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=398940
public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
}
// This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to
configure the HTTP request pipeline.
public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app,
IHostingEnvironment env)
{
if (env.IsDevelopment())
{
app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-23-320.jpg)
![28
{
ViewData["Message"] = $"It is {_clock.GetTime().ToString("T")}";
return View();
}
You also have to change the view Home/Index to display the value.
Code Listing 4-7
<div class="text-center">
<h1 class="display-4">Welcome</h1>
<p>@ViewData["Message"]</p>
<p>Learn about <a href="https://...">building Web apps with ASP.NET
Core</a>.</p>
</div>
The complete file for the HomeController is provided in the following listing.
Code Listing 4-8
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private IClock _clock;
public HomeController(IClock clock)
{
_clock = clock;
}
public IActionResult Index()
{
ViewData["Message"] = $"It is {_clock.GetTime().ToString("T")}";
return View();
}
...
}
Tying it all together via the configuration
If you run the project now, you will get the following error: Unable to resolve service for
type 'IClock' while attempting to activate 'Controllers.HomeController'.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-28-320.jpg)
![35
As you can see, the only difference between this call and what you saw in the app startup
section is that here, we are injecting the IHostingEnvironment into the constructor instead of
the Configure method, which is a special case that works only in the startup class.
Startup class
The Startup class is absolutely the most important class in your application because it defines
the pipeline of your web application and registers all the needed middleware components.
Because of this, it might be very complex with lots of lines of code. If you add checking for the
environment, everything could be even more complicated and difficult to read and maintain.
For this reason, ASP.NET Core allows you to use different startup classes: one for each
environment you want to manage, and one for different "configure" methods.
Let's look at the Program.cs file:
Code Listing 4-12
public class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run();
}
public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) =>
WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
.UseStartup<Startup>();
}
The method .UseStartup<Startup>() is very clever. It can switch between different classes
automatically if you are following the right convention (method name + environment name).
For example, if you duplicate the Startup class and rename it StartupDevelopment, the
extension method will automatically use the new one in the development environment.
You can use the same convention for the Startup class methods. So, duplicate the Configure
method of the Startup.cs file, call it ConfigureDevelopment, and it will be called instead of
the original one only in the development environment.
Create your own environment
We already mentioned environments like user acceptance test (UAT) or quality assurance (QA),
but the IHostingEnvironments interface doesn't offer the methods IsUAT() or
IsQualityAssurance. So how can you create one?](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-35-320.jpg)
![47
ID={Username};Password={Password};Encrypt=True;TrustServerCertificate=False
;Connection Timeout=30;";
}
public class FacebookConfiguration
{
public string AppId { get; set; }
public string AppSecret { get; set; }
}
public class SmtpConfiguration
{
public string Host { get; set; }
public string Username { get; set; }
public string Password { get; set; }
public bool EnableSsl { get; set; }
public int Port { get; set; }
}
}
At this point, it remains to hydrate the C# classes with the values from the JSON file. If you
called your configuration file, appSettings.json, it comes out of the box (thanks to the new
WebHostBuilder), and you can skip this code block.
Otherwise, you have to modify the Program.cs file in order to specify your configurations (you
could have more than one), like this:
Code Listing 4-25
using Microsoft.AspNetCore;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup
{
public class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run();
}
public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[]
args) =>
WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
.ConfigureAppConfiguration((builderContext, config)
=>
{](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-47-320.jpg)
![50
}
}
This is awesome because you can keep the configuration files very lean, but now you need to
educate ASP.NET Core on how to handle multiple configuration files. To do that, change the
code you wrote previously to this:
Code Listing 4-29
using Microsoft.AspNetCore;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup
{
public class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run();
}
public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args)
=>
WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
.ConfigureAppConfiguration((builderContext, config) =>
{
IHostingEnvironment env =
builderContext.HostingEnvironment;
config
.AddJsonFile("mySettingsFile.json", optional:
false, reloadOnChange: true)
.AddJsonFile($"mySettingsFile.{env.EnvironmentName}
.json", optional: true, reloadOnChange: true);
})
.UseStartup<Startup>();
}
}
Now, for a development environment, you will get my-development-db-name as the database
name; otherwise, it will be named my-production-db-name. Remember to keep the same
JSON structure in your environment configuration files.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-50-320.jpg)
![54
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup
{
public class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run();
}
public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[]
args) =>
WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
.ConfigureLogging((hostingContext, logbuilder) =>
{
logbuilder.AddConsole();
logbuilder.AddDebug();
})
.UseStartup<Startup>();
}
}
Testing logging
The best part of this logging system is that it is natively used by the ASP.NET Core framework.
When running the application, you should see the following output.
Figure 4-10: Running a Web Application Using Kestrel](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-54-320.jpg)
![56
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Console;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup
{
public class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run();
}
public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args)
=>
WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
.ConfigureLogging((hostingContext, logbuilder) =>
{
if(hostingContext.HostingEnvironment.IsProduction())
{
logbuilder.SetMinimumLevel(LogLevel.Warning);
}
else
{
logbuilder.SetMinimumLevel(LogLevel.Debug);
}
logbuilder.AddConsole();
})
.UseStartup<Startup>();
}
}
Personally, I don't like this code, because you have to use an if statement to change the
logging configuration. Fortunately, ILogBuilder offers another way to change the logging
behavior via the configuration file:
Code Listing 4-34
public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) =>
WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
.ConfigureLogging((hostingContext, logbuilder) =>
{
logbuilder.AddConfiguration(hostingContext.Configuratio
n.GetSection("Logging"));
logbuilder.AddConsole();](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-56-320.jpg)
![59
services.AddHealthChecks();
...
}
public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
{
...
app.UseHealthChecks("/health");
...
}
The first configures the service to register different health checks, and the second registers the
middleware to respond on the endpoint /health.
Database checks
This basic probe does nothing more than return Healthy if the application is running. But more
sophisticated probes can be added, either by writing your own (by implementing the
IHealthCheck interface) or by using some contributed by the community, like package
BeatPulse, which provides many different health checks for lots of different database engines,
queues, caches, and so on.
To add the SQL Server check, just modify the call to AddHealthChecks by specifying the
additional check you want to run.
Code Listing 4-38
services.AddHealthChecks()
.AddSqlServer(Configuration["ConnectionStrings:DefaultConnection"]);
Since this a community feature, you need to install the NuGet package
AspNetCore.HealthChecks.SqlServer.
This just checks that your app can connect to the database server and can run a simple query
(the BeatPulse probe executes SELECT 1), but doesn't say anything about your specific
database. If you use Entity Framework to connect to your database, you can also check that the
database has been correctly created with all tables needed.
Code Listing 4-39
services.AddHealthChecks()
.AddDbContextCheck<MyAppDbContext>();](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-59-320.jpg)
![65
Return data from an API
Now that everything is correctly configured, you can create your first MVC controller. Not to
deviate too much from what you used in the previous version, let's create a folder called
Controllers.
Although not mandatory, the best practice is to create a folder for all the API controllers to
separate the API’s from the standard controllers.
Code Listing 5-2
using System.Linq;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebApi.Controllers.APIs
{
[Route("api/[controller]")]
public class UsersController : Controller
{
[HttpGet]
public User[] Get()
{
return new[]
{
new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname =
"Lattanzi", Twitter = "@imperugo"},
new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname
= "Chiaretta", Twitter = "@simonech"},
};
}
[HttpGet("{id}")]
public User Get(int id)
{
var users = new[]
{
new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname =
"Lattanzi", Twitter = "@imperugo"},
new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname
= "Chiaretta", Twitter = "@simonech"},
};
return users.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Id == id);
}
}
public class User
{
public int Id { get; set; }](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-65-320.jpg)
![66
public string Firstname { get; set; }
public string Lastname { get; set; }
public string Twitter { get; set; }
}
}
As you can see, the controller is simple and the code is not so different from the previous
version.
Let’s analyze this step by step.
[Route("api/[controller]")]
This says that the controller can manage all the requests with the api prefix in the URL.
Basically, if the URL doesn't start with /api, the controller will never handle the request. (This is
helpful for all the mixed applications that need to handle APIs and other contents like MVC
stuff).
[HttpGet]
This attribute specifies the verb for the action it is decorating. You could use all the possible
verbs: HttpGet, HttpPost, HttpPut, and so on.
Update data using APIs
You just saw how to return data as well as partially read input information from the query string.
Unfortunately, this is not so useful when you have to send a lot of data from the client to the
server because there is a limit related to the number of characters you can add to the URL. For
this reason, you have to move to another verb.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1) doesn't specify limits for the length of a query string, but
limits are imposed by web browsers and server software. You can find more info here.
This approach is not so different from what you saw before. The only difference is the place
where the data comes from: the body instead of the query string.
Code Listing 5-3
// Adding user
[HttpPost]
public IActionResult Update([FromBody] User user)
{
var users = new List<User>();
users.Add(user);
return new CreatedResult($"/api/users/{user.Id}", user);
}](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-66-320.jpg)
![67
//Deleting user
[HttpDelete]
public IActionResult Delete([FromQuery] int id)
{
var users = new List<User>
{
new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname = "Lattanzi",
Twitter = "@imperugo"},
new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname = "Chiaretta",
Twitter = "@simonech"},
};
var user = users.SingleOrDefault(x => x.Id == id);
if (user != null)
{
users.Remove(user);
return new EmptyResult();
}
return new NotFoundResult();
}
As you can see, the only differences are the following:
• [FromBody]: This specifies that data comes from the payload of the HTTP request.
• return new CreatedResult($"/api/users/{user.Id}", user);: This returns the
created object and the URL where the client can get the user again. The status code is
201 (created).
• return new EmptyResult();: Basically, this means status code 200 (OK). The
response body is empty.
• return new NotFoundResult();: This is the 404 message that is used when the
requested client can’t be found.
Testing APIs
A browser can be used to test the API because APIs are being implemented over HTTP, but
there are other applications that can help with this, too. One popular application is Postman,
which can be downloaded for free here.
The following screenshots show how to test the code we used previously.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-67-320.jpg)
![70
Delete user (/api/users?id=2 using DELETE):
Figure 5-4: Using Postman to Test REST Endpoint-4
ASP.NET MVC Core
As mentioned in the previous section, ASP.NET MVC isn't different than Web API, so the code
you are going to see here will be very similar, except for the result.
Because you already registered ASP.NET MVC for APIs, you can jump directly to the code. In
the same folder (Controller) where you created UserController, you can create another
controller with the scope of serving the main page of the website. In this case, call it
HomeController.
Code Listing 5-4
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc.Controllers.MVC
{
public class HomeController : Controller
{
[HttpGet]
public IActionResult Index()
{](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-70-320.jpg)
![75
Code Listing 5-6
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc.Models;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc.Controllers.MVC
{
public class HomeController : Controller
{
[HttpGet]
public IActionResult Index()
{
var users = new[]
{
new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname =
"Lattanzi", Twitter = "@imperugo"},
new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname =
"Chiaretta", Twitter = "@simonech"},
};
return View(users);
}
}
}
Notice that we have reused the class User previously created for the API response. This code
doesn't need explanation; you’re just sending an array of users as a model to a View method.
In our view, it’s time to get users from the controller and print the data to the page. The first
thing to do is to specify what kind of model the view is using. In our case, it’s
IEnumerable<User>.
Code Listing 5-7
@model IEnumerable<Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc.Models.User>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Hello World</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World</h1>
</body>
</html>
Now you have to iterate all the users from the model and show the data.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-75-320.jpg)
![80
In the first line, the element is brown with attributes in red. In the second, the element is purple
with the special attribute also in purple (the normal attribute is still red). Visual Studio recognizes
both normal HTML tags and attributes, and Tag Helpers. This avoids confusion when editing a
view.
ASP.NET Core MVC comes with a lot of Tag Helpers; most of them are just re-implementing the
same HTML Razor helpers used to edit forms, like the input, form, label, and select
elements. But there are other Tag Helpers used to manage cache, render different HTML
elements based on the environment, and manage script fallback or CSS files. You can see
many of these Tag Helpers used in the ViewShared_Layout.cshtml file in the default
project template. A reduced version of the file (without the body) is available in the following
code listing.
Code Listing 5-11
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"
/>
<title>@ViewData["Title"] - ViewHelpers</title>
<environment include="Development">
<link rel="stylesheet"
href="~/lib/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.css" />
</environment>
<environment exclude="Development">
<link rel="stylesheet"
href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter-
bootstrap/4.1.3/css/bootstrap.min.css"
asp-fallback-
href="~/lib/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css"
asp-fallback-test-class="sr-only" asp-fallback-test-
property="position" asp-fallback-test-value="absolute"
integrity="sha256-
eSi1q2PG6J7g7ib17yAaWMcrr5GrtohYChqibrV7PBE="/>
</environment>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="~/css/site.css" />
</head>
<body>
[...]
<environment include="Development">
<script src="~/lib/jquery/dist/jquery.js"></script>
<script src="~/lib/bootstrap/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.js"></script>
</environment>
<environment exclude="Development">](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-80-320.jpg)
![90
If we have to make a comparison, we could say that this file is like a combo between the MVC
controller and its model. If you read the MVC part, you surely remember the logic behind the
controller, where you create an array of users and return that model to the view. With a Razor
Page, it’s not much different.
Code Listing 5-23
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.RazorPages;
namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup.Pages
{
public class IndexModel: PageModel
{
public User[] Users {get;set;}
public void OnGet()
{
Users = new[]
{
new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname =
"Lattanzi", Twitter = "@imperugo"},
new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname =
"Chiaretta", Twitter = "@simonech"},
};;
}
}
}
Now go back a few pages and compare it to the code in Code Listing 5-6; you will notice a few
changes. The code is inside an OnGet method, while with MVC it is implemented in the Index
action method of the HomeController. Also, the Index method had the attribute [HttpGet] to
indicate which action has to be executed for an HTTP GET verb. As you can imagine, with Razor
Pages, the name of the method serves the same function as the attribute used with ASP.NET
MVC. The OnGet method is executed for GET requests. If you have to handle POST, the method
would be OnPost, and so on for all other verbs.
So, the name of the method changes, as well as the way to pass the model to the view. In MVC
you create a ViewModel object and return it with the View method, while with a Razor Page you
just assign it to a property of the PageModel.
The Razor markup is exactly the same because the only difference between the two
frameworks is how the view is instantiated.
Code Listing 5-24
@page
@model Pages.IndexModel
@{
Layout = null;](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-90-320.jpg)
![97
Code Listing 6-1
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">
<system.webServer>
<handlers>
<add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*"
modules="AspNetCoreModuleV2"
resourceType="Unspecified" />
</handlers>
<aspNetCore
processPath="dotnet"
arguments=".PublishingSample.dll"
stdoutLogEnabled="false"
stdoutLogFile=".logsstdout"
hostingModel="inprocess" />
</system.webServer>
</location>
</configuration>
Publishing the application is easy using the dotnet command-line tool. Just use the publish
command to build and generate a self-contained folder that can be easily copied to the location
where the website is. Normally, the published application is saved to the
./bin/[configuration]/[framework]/publish folder, but the target location can also be
changed with a command-line option.
Code Listing 6-2
dotnet publish
--framework netcoreapp2.2
--output "c:tempPublishFolder"
--configuration Release
The publish operation also runs all the MSBuild targets and can, for example, run the bundling
and minification of scripts and styles. It also automatically creates (or updates if one is specified)
the web.config file with the right values for the project.
Now, all that’s left is copying the folder to where the website is configured. The ASP.NET Core
site is running on IIS.
One thing that is missing in the dotnet publish command is the ability to publish to a remote
server and perform incremental updates. An alternative publish method is the Publish dialog in
Visual Studio.
Typically, a system administrator will provide a publishing profile that can be imported into the
Publish dialog. When publishing, the application will be built and then pushed to the remote
server via Web Deploy.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-97-320.jpg)
![104
.NET Core supports a lot of different systems, but each of them has a very specific identifier,
which is in the format [os].[version]-[arch] (e.g., osx.10.11-x64). But despite the
templated look, they are unique strings, so before using a new RID, you have to make sure it's
supported and has the right name. Refer to the RID Catalog on the Microsoft Docs site for more
information.
The runtimes and application support can be specified inside the RuntimeIdentifiers
property of the project file as a list of RIDs separated by semicolons (;). Leave no space after
the semicolon, or the restore will fail.
Code Listing 7-1
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
<PropertyGroup>
<OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
<TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.2</TargetFramework>
<RuntimeIdentifiers>win10-x64;osx.10.12-x64;ubuntu.14.04-
x64</RuntimeIdentifiers>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
Once the file has been modified, we should run dotnet restore again. This will download all
packages, also for other runtimes, as shown in the following command prompt window.
Figure 7-1: Command Prompt Output
You can now publish an app for all three runtimes, thus creating self-contained folders that
contain native binary executables that can be copied directly to the target machine.
To publish them, run the dotnet publish command three times, one per runtime you want to
build.
Code Listing 7-2
dotnet publish -r win10-x64
dotnet publish -r osx.10.12-x64
dotnet publish -r ubuntu.14.04-x64](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aspnet-core-2-succinctly-190414063120/85/Aspnet-core-2-succinctly-104-320.jpg)
Aspnet core-2-succinctly
- 2. By Simone Chiaretta and Ugo Lattanzi Foreword by Daniel Jebaraj
- 3. 3 Copyright © 2019 by Syncfusion, Inc. 2501 Aerial Center Parkway Suite 200 Morrisville, NC 27560 USA All rights reserved. Important licensing information. Please read. This book is available for free download from www.syncfusion.com on completion of a registration form. If you obtained this book from any other source, please register and download a free copy from www.syncfusion.com. This book is licensed for reading only if obtained from www.syncfusion.com. This book is licensed strictly for personal or educational use. Redistribution in any form is prohibited. The authors and copyright holders provide absolutely no warranty for any information provided. The authors and copyright holders shall not be liable for any claim, damages, or any other liability arising from, out of, or in connection with the information in this book. Please do not use this book if the listed terms are unacceptable. Use shall constitute acceptance of the terms listed. SYNCFUSION, SUCCINCTLY, DELIVER INNOVATION WITH EASE, ESSENTIAL, and .NET ESSENTIALS are the registered trademarks of Syncfusion, Inc. Technical Reviewer: James McCaffrey Copy Editor: Courtney Wright Acquisitions Coordinator: Tres Watkins, content development manager, Syncfusion, Inc. Proofreader: Graham High, senior content producer, Syncfusion, Inc.
- 4. 4 Table of Contents The Story behind the Succinctly Series of Books ................................................................. 6 About the Authors ................................................................................................................... 8 About ASP.NET Core 2 Succinctly ......................................................................................... 9 Introduction to ASP.NET Core ...............................................................................................10 Chapter 1 What Are .NET Core and ASP.NET Core? ...........................................................11 .NET Core ............................................................................................................................11 ASP.NET Core .....................................................................................................................11 .NET Standard......................................................................................................................11 Chapter 2 A Brief History of the Microsoft Web Stack ........................................................13 ASP.NET Web Forms...........................................................................................................13 ASP.NET MVC.....................................................................................................................14 ASP.NET Web API...............................................................................................................14 OWIN and Katana ................................................................................................................14 What led to .NET Core .........................................................................................................15 Chapter 3 Getting Started with .NET Core............................................................................16 Installing .NET Core on Windows .........................................................................................16 Installing .NET Core on a Mac (or Linux)..............................................................................16 Building the first .NET Core application ................................................................................17 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................20 Chapter 4 ASP.NET Core Basics...........................................................................................21 Web App startup...................................................................................................................21 Dependency injection ...........................................................................................................24
- 5. 5 Environments .......................................................................................................................29 Static files.............................................................................................................................37 Error handling and exception pages .....................................................................................42 Configuration files.................................................................................................................45 Logging ................................................................................................................................51 Health checks.......................................................................................................................58 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................61 Chapter 5 Beyond the Basics: Application Frameworks.....................................................62 Web API...............................................................................................................................62 ASP.NET MVC Core ............................................................................................................70 View-specific features...........................................................................................................78 Razor Pages ........................................................................................................................87 Single-page applications ......................................................................................................92 SignalR ................................................................................................................................94 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................94 Chapter 6 How to Deploy ASP.NET Core Apps....................................................................95 How to deploy on IIS ............................................................................................................95 Azure....................................................................................................................................98 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................102 Chapter 7 Tools Used to Develop ASP.NET Core Apps ....................................................103 Using dotnet CLI.................................................................................................................103 Developing ASP.NET Core using Visual Studio Code ........................................................105 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................108 A Look at the Future .............................................................................................................109
- 6. 6 The Story behind the Succinctly Series of Books Daniel Jebaraj, Vice President Syncfusion, Inc. taying on the cutting edge As many of you may know, Syncfusion is a provider of software components for the Microsoft platform. This puts us in the exciting but challenging position of always being on the cutting edge. Whenever platforms or tools are shipping out of Microsoft, which seems to be about every other week these days, we have to educate ourselves, quickly. Information is plentiful but harder to digest In reality, this translates into a lot of book orders, blog searches, and Twitter scans. While more information is becoming available on the Internet and more and more books are being published, even on topics that are relatively new, one aspect that continues to inhibit us is the inability to find concise technology overview books. We are usually faced with two options: read several 500+ page books or scour the web for relevant blog posts and other articles. Just as everyone else who has a job to do and customers to serve, we find this quite frustrating. The Succinctly series This frustration translated into a deep desire to produce a series of concise technical books that would be targeted at developers working on the Microsoft platform. We firmly believe, given the background knowledge such developers have, that most topics can be translated into books that are between 50 and 100 pages. This is exactly what we resolved to accomplish with the Succinctly series. Isn’t everything wonderful born out of a deep desire to change things for the better? The best authors, the best content Each author was carefully chosen from a pool of talented experts who shared our vision. The book you now hold in your hands, and the others available in this series, are a result of the authors’ tireless work. You will find original content that is guaranteed to get you up and running in about the time it takes to drink a few cups of coffee. S
- 7. 7 Free forever Syncfusion will be working to produce books on several topics. The books will always be free. Any updates we publish will also be free. Free? What is the catch? There is no catch here. Syncfusion has a vested interest in this effort. As a component vendor, our unique claim has always been that we offer deeper and broader frameworks than anyone else on the market. Developer education greatly helps us market and sell against competing vendors who promise to “enable AJAX support with one click,” or “turn the moon to cheese!” Let us know what you think If you have any topics of interest, thoughts, or feedback, please feel free to send them to us at succinctly-series@syncfusion.com. We sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book and that it helps you better understand the topic of study. Thank you for reading. Please follow us on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook to help us spread the word about the Succinctly series!
- 8. 8 About the Authors Ugo Lattanzi Ugo Lattanzi is a solution architect who specializes in enterprise applications with a focus on web applications, service-oriented applications, and all environments where scalability is a top priority. Due to his experience in recent years, he now focuses on technologies like ASP.NET, Node.js, cloud computing (Azure and AWS), enterprise service bus, AngularJS, and JavaScript. Thanks to his passion for web development, Microsoft has recognized him as a Microsoft MVP for eight years in web technologies. Ugo is a speaker for many important technology communities; he is a co-organizer of the widely appreciated Web European Conference in Milan. He has authored several books and articles, and has coauthored the books OWIN Succinctly and the previous edition of this book with Simone Chiaretta, both of which were published by Syncfusion. When not working, he loves to spend time with his son, Tommaso, and his wife, Eleonora. He also enjoys snowboarding and cycling. Simone Chiaretta Simone Chiaretta is a web architect and developer who enjoys sharing his development experiences—including almost 20 years’ worth of knowledge on web development—concerning ASP.NET and other web technologies. He has been an ASP.NET Microsoft MVP for eight years, authoring several books about ASP.NET MVC, including Beginning ASP.NET MVC 1.0; What's New in ASP.NET MVC 2; and Front-end Development with ASP.NET Core, Angular, and Bootstrap; all published by Wrox, He has also coauthored OWIN Succinctly and the first edition of this book with Ugo Lattanzi, both of which were published by Syncfusion. Simone has spoken at many international developer conferences and contributed to online developer portals like SimpleTalk. He also cofounded the Italian ALT.NET user group ugialt.NET, and he is the co-organizer of many conferences in Milan, including the Web European Conference. When not writing code, blog posts, or taking part in the worldwide .NET community, he is either training for or participating in Ironman triathlons. He is currently one of many expats living and working in the capital of European Union, Brussels.
- 9. 9 About ASP.NET Core 2 Succinctly There are only a few years that one can consider as landmarks of a profession, and 2016 was one for software development. That is when Microsoft released .NET Core, its third major development library and SDK. But this time, it was not just for Windows, and it was not a closed- source product. It was an open-source SDK that allowed developers to build and run .NET applications on Windows, Mac, and Linux. This book specifically covers the web development part of the framework, ASP.NET Core, that in the meantime went through some improvements. This book will first guide readers through the foundations of the library, then cover its basic features, and finally cover the new version of the web application frameworks ASP.NET MVC and Web API. At its end, this book will show you how to deploy applications to the cloud, specifically on Azure. The book is based on the most recent version of the framework at the time of writing: .NET Core 2.2. When showing how to develop with IDEs, it uses Visual Studio 2017 and the new text- based cross-platform IDE, Visual Studio Code.
- 10. 10 Introduction to ASP.NET Core ASP.NET Core is the web development framework that comes together with .NET Core and, besides all the new features, also adopts a significantly new approach to web development. The first chapters go through the history of Microsoft's web stack to show the motivations that led to this framework. Later, the book moves to more practical matters, like showing you how to get started with .NET Core and describing the foundations of the framework.
- 11. 11 Chapter 1 What Are .NET Core and ASP.NET Core? Before trying to understand the reason for its existence, let's first try to define what .NET Core and ASP.NET Core are. .NET Core The framework .NET Core 2.2 is a modular, cross-platform, cloud-optimized version of the .NET Framework, consisting of the CoreCLR and the implementation of the .NET Standard Library 2.0. One of the main features of this library is the ability to install only the features that are needed for the application you are building, reducing its footprint and the possibility of installing the library itself within the application. This makes it possible for applications built with different versions to co-exist on the same machine without the compatibility problems typical of the full .NET Framework. ASP.NET Core ASP.NET Core is a complete rewrite of ASP.NET, built to be cross-platform, completely open- source, and without the limitations of backward compatibility. Like .NET Core, ASP.NET Core is built with a modular approach. This means the application you build can include only the needed features without taking on additional burdens. This is made possible by the new startup and execution environment, based on the Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN) standard. In addition, ASP.NET Core comes with many interesting features that we are going to see throughout this book, like an integrated dependency injection system and a new application framework that unifies the programming models of ASP.NET MVC and Web API. .NET Standard The .NET Standard won't be covered in detail in this book, but since it has been mentioned (and you have probably heard about it), let's define what it is. .NET Standard is a specification that defines a set of APIs a .NET platform must implement. Its aim is to simplify the sharing of code and libraries among different implementation of .NET. The latest version of these specifications, .NET Standard 2.0, includes all the APIs available in the .NET Framework 4.6.1. .NET Standard 2.0 is also supported by: • .NET Core 2.0 • Mono 5.4 • Xamarin.iOS 5.4
- 12. 12 • Xamarin.Android 10.14 • Universal Windows Platform for Windows 10 (Fall Creators Update) This means that libraries developed for .NET Standard 2.0 can be used in any of those platforms. It's a big advantage for libraries’ developers, since they no longer have to develop different libraries to target different platforms. For you as a developer, the main takeaway is that .NET Core 2.0 has feature parity with the "full" .NET Framework 4.6.1, and this makes it possible to port older applications to .NET Core.
- 13. 13 Chapter 2 A Brief History of the Microsoft Web Stack ASP.NET Core is very different from anything that came before it. In order to understand why ASP.NET Core came to be, it's important to see what came before, and how the web development world has changed during the last 15 years. ASP.NET Web Forms Web Forms was released with the first version of the .NET Framework back in 2002. It was meant to appeal to two different kinds of developers. The first group included web developers coming from Classic ASP, also called Active Server Pages, who were already building websites and web applications with a mix of static HTML and dynamic server-side scripting (usually VBScript), which were used by the framework to hide the complexity of interacting with the underlying HTTP connection and web server. The framework also provided other services to implement basic state management, caching, and other lower- level concerns. The second group was comprised of a large number of WinForms application developers who were forced by changes in the market to approach the world of web development. Those developers didn't know how to write HTML; they were used to developing the UI of their applications by dragging elements onto the designer surface of an IDE. Web Forms was engineered by combining elements from both technologies. It turned out to be a framework where everything was abstracted: the elements of the HTTP connection (request and response), the HTML markup of UI elements, and the stateless nature of the web—this last one was via the infamous ViewState. This mix was very successful, as it allowed a lot of new developers to build web apps thanks to the feature-rich, approachable, event-based programming model. Over the years, many things changed. These new developers became more skilled and wanted to have more control over the HTML markup produced. And the web programming model changed as well, with the more extensive usage of JavaScript libraries, with Ajax, and with the introduction of mobile devices. But it was difficult for Web Forms to evolve for several reasons: • It was a huge, monolithic framework that was heavily coupled with the main abstraction layer System.Web. • Given its programming model, which relied on Visual Studio, the release cycle of Web Forms was tied to its IDE and the full framework, so years passed between updates. • Web Forms was coupled with Internet Information Services (IIS), which was even more difficult to upgrade because it was part of the operating system itself.
- 14. 14 ASP.NET MVC To try and solve the aforementioned issues, Microsoft released a new web framework called ASP.NET MVC in 2009. It was based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern to keep a clear separation between business logic and presentation logic, allowing complete control over the HTML markup. In addition to this, it was released as a separate library, one not included in the framework. Thanks to this release model, and not relying completely on the IDE for the design of the UI, it was possible to easily update it, keeping it more in line with the fast-paced world of web development. Although ASP.NET MVC solved the problem of the slow release cycle and removing the HTML markup abstraction, it still suffered from a dependency on the .NET Framework and System.Web, which kept it strictly coupled with IIS and Windows. ASP.NET Web API Over time, a new web programming model appeared. Instead of processing data server-side and sending the fully rendered page to the browser, this new paradigm, later called Single-Page Applications (SPA), used mostly static webpages that fetched data via Ajax from the server and rendered the UI directly on the client via JavaScript. Microsoft needed to implement a lighter, web-aware version of the library it already had for remote communication, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), so it released ASP.NET Web API. This library was even more modular than the other libraries, and probably because it was originally developed by the WCF team and not the ASP.NET team, it didn't rely on System.Web and IIS. This made Web API completely independent from the rest of ASP.NET and IIS, opening possibilities such as running it inside a custom host or under different web servers. OWIN and Katana With all these modular frameworks spreading around, there was the risk that developers would have to manage separate hosts for different aspects of modern applications. To avoid this becoming a real problem, a group of developers from the .NET community created a new standard, called OWIN, which stands for Open Web Interface for .NET. OWIN defines the components of a modern web application and how those components interact. Microsoft released an OWIN-compliant web server in 2013, called Katana, and made sure its web frameworks worked inside it. Some problems still remained, however. ASP.NET MVC, being tied to System.Web, couldn't run inside Katana. Also, all these frameworks, being developed by different teams at different times, had different programming models. For example, both ASP.NET MVC and Web API supported dependency injection, but in different ways. If developers wanted to combine MVC and Web API inside the same application, they had to implement them twice.
- 15. 15 What led to .NET Core With the latest iteration of libraries, it was clear that the maximum potential of the full .NET Framework had been reached. Still, many issues remained open: • You couldn't run .NET applications on a non-Windows system. • The dependency on the full framework made .NET apps less suitable for high- density scenarios, like the cloud, where hundreds of applications run on a single machine and must scale up very quickly. • The complexity of the .NET project system prevented the development of .NET apps outside of Visual Studio. It became clear that the best possible solution was to start from scratch, redesigning the ASP.NET framework to be fully modular with clearly implemented, generic foundations. It also needed to be cross-platform and based on an underlying .NET framework adhering to the same principles. For these reasons, Microsoft completely rebuilt ASP.NET Core based on a new cross-platform .NET runtime, which later became .NET Core.
- 16. 16 Chapter 3 Getting Started with .NET Core Now that it is clear what ASP.NET Core and .NET Core are, and why they were created, it's time to look at how to install them and how to build a simple application with them. Installing .NET Core on Windows Installing .NET Core on Windows is pretty easy. With Visual Studio 2017, chances are you already installed it. If not, go back to the Visual Studio Installer and make sure you have the .NET Core workload selected. Figure 3-1: Visual Studio Installer Installing .NET Core on a Mac (or Linux) The beauty of .NET Core is that it can also be installed on a Mac (or Linux, for that matter) without relying on third-party frameworks, as was needed before with Mono. Each distribution of Linux has its own way of installing, but the process boils down to the same general steps: 1. Install prerequisites and configure the package manager of your distribution. 2. Invoke the package manager to download and install .NET Core and its tools.
- 17. 17 You can read instructions specific to your distribution on the official .NET Core website. There are no prerequisites for macOS, so you can install the official SDK for macOS by downloading it directly from the official .NET Core website. On Linux and Mac, you do not have Visual Studio to develop apps, but you can use the .NET Core SDK or Visual Studio Code, which is a lightweight, extensible, cross-platform text editor built by Microsoft and the community. The last chapter of this book covers each of the tools with which you can build .NET Core apps. Building the first .NET Core application With so many operating systems and tools available, there are many ways to create a .NET Core application, but all the visual tools rely on the SDK to get things done. Here you are going to build your first .NET Core application using the dotnet command-line interface (CLI). The main entry point for the SDK is the dotnet command. This command, depending on the verb used, can do lots of things, from acting as host and runner for the application to creating a new project, managing dependencies, and building applications. Command-line tools As an example, let's create a simple "Hello World" command-line application using the dotnet CLI. Since the command-line tools are cross-platform, the following steps can be performed on any of the supported systems: Windows, Mac, or Linux. Code Listing 3-1 dotnet new console -o HelloWorldApp This command creates a new application of type console, and puts it (-o for output) in the folder HelloWorldApp. Now, move into the folder where the application has been created (cd HelloWorldApp) and launch the dotnet run command to build and run the project. Figure 3-2 shows the output of this sequence of commands.
- 18. 18 Figure 3-2: dotnet CLI Let's dive into what happened here. The dotnet new command added two files to the folder: • HelloWorldApp.csproj: an XML file containing the configuration of the project. • Program.cs: the actual code file. The Program.cs file is pretty simple; it just prints the Hello World! string to the console. Code Listing 3-2 using System; namespace HelloWorldApp { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Hello World!"); } } }
- 19. 19 What is more interesting to look at is the HelloWorldApp.csproj file. If you’ve ever looked at the project files used by Visual Studio with the full .NET Framework, you might wonder why we would even discuss them. You probably rarely looked inside them, as they were black boxes written in XML. However, with .NET Core, they become easier to modify manually or via other commands of the dotnet tool. Code Listing 3-3 <Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk"> <PropertyGroup> <OutputType>Exe</OutputType> <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.2</TargetFramework> </PropertyGroup> </Project> This is pretty simple, and it just says that the application targets the netcoreapp2.2 framework. Visual Studio Another way you can build the same console application is by using Visual Studio. First, go to the New Project dialog and select Console App (.NET Core), as shown in Figure 3-3. Figure 3-3: New Console Application Using Visual Studio 2017 Once the project has been created, you can edit it as you normally would, and run it. Figure 3-4 shows Visual Studio with the console application loaded in.
- 20. 20 Figure 3-4: Hello World Application Note: If you used .NET Core 1.1, you will remember that even a project as simple as "Hello World" had zillions of dependencies. This was because of the modular approach of the framework, staying true to the "reference what you need" approach. It proved to be a bit too much, so with .NET Core 2.0, all the basic dependencies are included in the Microsoft.NETCore.App metapackage. You can trim it down if you want to, but it at least simplifies the initial application development. Conclusion In these chapters, we've shown why 2016 is one of the few landmarks in our industry, along with Microsoft’s release of Classic ASP in 1996, and the release of the .NET Framework and ASP.NET in 2002. .NET Core is the next evolution of the Microsoft web development stack. While not as different from the .NET Framework as the .NET Framework was from ASP Classic, it still changed the foundations on which ASP.NET applications are built. You've also seen how to install .NET Core on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and how to build a simple application using the base layer of .NET tools: the dotnet CLI. With this knowledge, you are ready to explore the new ASP.NET Core application framework.
- 21. 21 Chapter 4 ASP.NET Core Basics In this chapter, you are going to learn about the main innovations of the latest version of ASP.NET that have dramatically changed from the versions based on ASP.NET 4 and ASP.NET Core 1.x. In particular, you are going to see why ASP.NET Core is defined as a lean framework, and how to manage static files, different hosting environments, exceptions, dependency injection, and all the other significant features of the latest release. Web App startup You can better understand how to use .NET Core by first creating a new empty application with Visual Studio 2017. If you prefer the lightweight Visual Studio Code instead of Visual Studio, you must use the command line to create an empty template. When creating a new ASP.NET Core template from Visual Studio, you have different options. To better understand the flow and all the components you need for a web application, the empty template is the best choice. Figure 4-1: New Web Application Using Visual Studio 2017
- 22. 22 Looking at the Solution Explorer, notice that the folder structure and files are very different from the previous version of ASP.NET. First of all, there is a wwwroot folder that contains all the static files. In a different section, we will explain how to use the wwwroot folder and the reason why you need it. All files in the root of the project are either new additions or they changed their role: • Program.cs is the entry point for the web application; everything starts from here. As we mentioned in the previous chapters, the .NET Core host can only run console applications. So, the web app is a console application too. • project.csproj, where project is the name you provided in the creation wizard, is an XML-based project configuration file. It contains all our package references and some build configuration. • Startup.cs is not exactly new. If you already used OWIN, you probably know the role of this class, but we can definitely say if the Program.cs is the entry point of the .NET Core app, Startup.cs is the entry point of the ASP.NET Core application (previously we were using the global.asax file). The WebApplication1.csproj file is not visible in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer window, but you can easily see what’s inside by right-clicking on the project and selecting Edit WebApplication1.csproj. Program.cs As mentioned before, this class is the entry point of the .NET Core application, and its role is to create the host for the web application. Since we can host our web application on different web servers with .NET Core, this is the right place to configure everything. Code Listing 4-1 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration; using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run(); }
- 23. 23 public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) => WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .UseStartup<Startup>(); } } As you can see, this class is simple, as the only important method is CreateDefaultBuilder, which configures all the needed services for you. If you are already using ASP.NET Core 1.x (or you read the previous edition of this book), you’ll notice that this class has changed significantly. Startup.cs The ASP.NET Core pipeline starts here, and, as you can see from the following code, almost nothing comes with the template. Code Listing 4-2 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Startup { // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to add services to the container. // For more information on how to configure your application, visit https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=398940 public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { } // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to configure the HTTP request pipeline. public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env) { if (env.IsDevelopment()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
- 24. 24 } app.Run(async (context) => { await context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello World!"); }); } } } What’s important here are the methods ConfigureServices, where dependency injection is configured (we’ll talk about this later in the chapter), and Configure, where all needed middleware components are registered and configured. Tip: We already wrote a book about OWIN, so if you don't know what a middleware component is or how to use it, we suggest you read the free ebook OWIN Succinctly, available from Syncfusion. The app.Run method is a perfect example of an inline middleware component. In this case, it is not needed because the web application will always return the text string Hello World!, but more complex logic (such as authentication, monitoring, exception handling, and so on) can be added. Dependency injection One of the biggest new features of ASP.NET Core is the inclusion of a way to handle dependencies directly inside the base library. This has three major benefits: • Developers no longer have an excuse not to use it; whereas before it was basically left to their judgement. • You don't need to use third-party libraries. • All the application frameworks and middleware components rely on this central configuration, so there is no need to configure dependency injection in different places and different ways, as was needed before. What is dependency injection? Before looking at how to use dependency injection inside ASP.NET Core applications, let's see what it is and why it is important. In order to be easy to maintain, systems are usually made of many classes, each of them with very specific responsibilities. For example, if you want to build a system that sends emails, you might have the main entry point of the system, one class that is responsible for formatting text, and another that is responsible for actually sending the email.
- 25. 25 The problem with this approach is that if references to these additional classes are kept directly inside the entry point, it becomes impossible to change the implementation of the helper class without touching the main class. This is where dependency injection, usually referred to as DI, comes into play. Instead of directly instantiating the lower-level classes, the high-level modules receive the instances from the outside, typically as parameters of their constructors. Described more formally by Robert C. “Uncle Bob” Martin, systems built this way adhere to one of the five SOLID principles, the dependency inversion principle1 : A. High-level modules should not depend on low-level modules. Both should depend on abstractions. B. Abstractions should not depend on details. Details should depend on abstractions. While manually creating and injecting objects can work in small systems, those objects can become unmanageable when systems grow in size and hundreds or thousands of classes are needed. To solve this problem, another class is required: a factory that takes over the creation of all objects in the system, injecting the right dependencies. This class is called the container. The container, called an Inversion of Control (IoC) container, keeps a list of all the interfaces needed and the concrete class that implements them. When asked for an instance of any class, it looks at the dependencies it needs and passes them based on the list it keeps. This way, very complex graphs of objects can be easily created with a few lines of code. In addition to managing dependencies, these IoC containers also manage the lifetime of the objects they create. They know whether they can reuse an instance or need to create a new one. This is a very short introduction to a very important and complicated topic related to the quality of software. Countless articles and books have been written about dependency injection and SOLID principles in general. A good starting point are the articles by Robert C. "Uncle Bob" Martin2 or Martin Fowler. Configuring dependency injection in ASP.NET Core Now that you understand the importance of using DI in applications, you might wonder how to configure them. It is actually easy. It all happens in the ConfigureServices method. Code Listing 4-2 public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { // Here goes the configuration } 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_inversion_principle 2 http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.PrinciplesOfOod
- 26. 26 The parameter that the method accepts is of the type IServiceCollection. This is the list used by the container to keep track of all the dependencies needed by the application, so it is to this collection that you add your classes. There are two types of dependencies that can be added to the services list. First, there are the ones needed by the frameworks to work, and they are usually configured using extension methods like AddServiceName. For example, if you want to use ASP.NET Core MVC, you need to write services.AddMvc() so that all the controllers and filters are automatically added to the list. Also, if you want to use Entity Framework, you need to add DBContext with services.AddDbContext<ExampleDbContext>(...). Then there are the dependencies specific to your application; they must be added individually by specifying the concrete class and the interface it implements. Since you are adding them yourself, you can also specify the lifetime of the service. Three kinds of lifecycles are available in the ASP.NET Core IoC container, and each of them has to be added using a different method. The first is Transient. This lifecycle is used for lightweight services that do not hold any state and are fast to instantiate. They are added using the method services.AddTransient<IClock,Clock>(), and a new instance of the class is created every time it is needed. The second lifecycle is Scoped. This is typically used for services that contain a state that is valid only for the current request, like repositories and data access classes. Services registered as scoped will be created at the beginning of the request, and the same instance will be reused every time the class is needed within the same request. They are added using the method services.AddScoped<IRepository, Repository>(). The last lifecycle is called Singleton, and as the name implies, services registered this way will act like singletons. They are created the first time they are needed and are reused throughout the rest of the application. Such services typically hold an application state like an in-memory cache. They are added via the method services.AddSingleton<IApplicationCache, ApplicationCache>(). Using dependency injection Let's see an example of how DI-IoC is used in an ASP.NET MVC application. ASP.NET MVC is covered in detail in a later chapter, so don't worry if something looks unfamiliar—just focus on how dependencies are configured and reused. To use dependency injection, you need four classes: • The class that needs to use an external service, also called the consumer class. In our example, it’s an ASP.NET MVC controller. • The interface that defines what the external service does, which in our example is just giving the time of the day. • The class that actually implements the interface. • The Startup.cs file where the configuration will be saved.
- 27. 27 The interface First, you have to define the interface of the service, which is the only thing the consumer depends on. Code Listing 4-3 public interface IClock { DateTime GetTime(); } Concrete implementation Once the interface is defined, you need to implement the concrete class that does the actual work. Code Listing 4-4 public class Clock: IClock { public DateTime GetTime() { return DateTime.Now; } } Consumer controllers For the sake of this example, you are going to slightly modify the HomeController that comes with the default project template. The most important change is the addition of a constructor and a private variable to hold the reference of the external dependency. Code Listing 4-5 private readonly IClock _clock; public HomeController(IClock clock) { _clock = clock; } Obviously, you also have to use the dependency somehow. For this example, just write the current time in the home page by modifying the Index method. Code Listing 4-6 public IActionResult Index()
- 28. 28 { ViewData["Message"] = $"It is {_clock.GetTime().ToString("T")}"; return View(); } You also have to change the view Home/Index to display the value. Code Listing 4-7 <div class="text-center"> <h1 class="display-4">Welcome</h1> <p>@ViewData["Message"]</p> <p>Learn about <a href="https://...">building Web apps with ASP.NET Core</a>.</p> </div> The complete file for the HomeController is provided in the following listing. Code Listing 4-8 public class HomeController : Controller { private IClock _clock; public HomeController(IClock clock) { _clock = clock; } public IActionResult Index() { ViewData["Message"] = $"It is {_clock.GetTime().ToString("T")}"; return View(); } ... } Tying it all together via the configuration If you run the project now, you will get the following error: Unable to resolve service for type 'IClock' while attempting to activate 'Controllers.HomeController'.
- 29. 29 This is because you haven't configured the IoC container yet. You just need to configure it so that it injects the right class (Clock) in all objects that declare a dependency of type IClock as a parameter of the constructor. You’ve already seen how this has to be done via the ConfigureServices method. Code Listing 4-9 public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { // Add framework services. services.AddMvc(); // Add application services. services.AddTransient<IClock, Clock>(); } The first line configures the application to use ASP.NET Core MVC, and the second one adds our simple clock service. We've shown how to use dependency injection in an ASP.NET application using a very simple external service that just gives the time, but the main elements needed are all there: • A consumer class that declares its dependencies via parameters in the constructor (by referencing their interfaces). • The interface of the service. • The concrete implementation of the interface. • The configuration that binds the interface and implementation together and informs the container of their existence. Environments Most applications we deploy need to handle at least two or more environments. For example, in a small application, we have the development environment (also known as dev), the production environment, and in some cases, the staging environment. More complex projects need to manage several environments, like quality assurance (QA), user acceptance test (UAT), pre-production, and so on. In this book, we are showing only what comes out of the box with ASP.NET Core, but you will see how to easily add new environments. One of my favorite features of ASP.NET Core, which is included with the framework, is what is called Hosting Environment Management. It allows you to work with multiple environments with no friction. But before diving deeper into this feature, you have to understand what the developer needs are.
- 30. 30 Old approach A good developer should never work on a production database, production storage, a production machine, and so on. Usually, in a .NET application, a developer manages this problem using the applicationSettings section in the web.config file, combined with config transformation syntax (more info at MSDN) and preprocessor directives. This approach is tricky, and it requires you to build the application differently for each environment because the config transformation and the preprocessor directives are applied at compile time. Further, this approach makes your code hard to read and maintain. As you may have noticed in the previous chapters, the web.config file is used only to configure the AspNetCoreModule in case our application must be hosted on Internet Information Services (IIS); otherwise, it is useless. For this reason, don’t use the config transformation approach—use something cooler. New approach ASP.NET Core offers an interface named IHostingEnvironment that has been available since the first run of our application. This means we can easily use it in our Startup.cs file if we need it. To detect that the application is running, the implementation of IHostingEnvironment reads a specific environment variable called ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT and checks its value. If it is Development, it means you are running the application in development mode. If it is Staging, you are running the application in a staging mode. And so it goes for all the environments you need to manage. Because this approach is based on an environment variable, the switch between the configuration files happens at runtime and not at compile time like the old ASP.NET. Visual Studio Visual Studio has a Run button, which is pretty awesome for developers because it runs the application, attaching the debugger. But what environment will be used by Visual Studio when you click the Run button? By default, Visual Studio uses development mode, but if you want to change it or configure a new environment, you can do so easily by looking at the file launchSettings.json, available in the Properties folder of your application. If you open it, you should have something like this: Code Listing 4-10 { "iisSettings": {
- 31. 31 "windowsAuthentication": false, "anonymousAuthentication": true, "iisExpress": { "applicationUrl": "http://localhost:50071", "sslPort": 44323 } }, "profiles": { "IIS Express": { "commandName": "IISExpress", "launchBrowser": true, "environmentVariables": { "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development" } }, "Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup": { "commandName": "Project", "launchBrowser": true, "applicationUrl": "https://localhost:5001;http://localhost:5000", "environmentVariables": { "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development" } } } } The iisSettings section contains all the settings related to IISExpress, while the profiles section contains the Kestrel configurations. If you are familiar with the JSON format, you can edit all these values in Visual Studio by following the steps depicted in Figures 4-2 and 4-3.
- 32. 32 Figure 4-2: Changing IIS Express Settings, Step 1
- 33. 33 Figure 4-3: Changing IIS Express Settings, Step 2 From here, you can also change the settings in the case of Kestrel by using the drop-down menu at the top. If you prefer to work directly with JSON and want to change the environment, change the value for ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT, and then save the file or add a new item in the profiles section with our settings. If you want to run your project outside of Visual Studio (by using the command line) and you want to force a specific profile defined in launchSettings.json, you can do this using a specific argument (dotnet run --launch-profile Development). IHostingEnvironment Sometimes a web application needs something more than switching the connection string from a developer database to a production database. For example, you may need to see the stack trace of an error if you are running the app on a local machine, or you may need to show an error page to the end user in the production version. There are several ways to do that. The most common is undoubtedly to inject the IHostingEnvironment interface into your constructor and use it to change the behavior of your app. The following sample code is a possible startup class.
- 34. 34 Code Listing 4-11 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Startup { private IHostingEnvironment _env; public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env) { _env = env; } public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { if (_env.IsDevelopment()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } app.Run(async (context) => { await context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello World!"); }); } } } In this example, the DeveloperExceptionPage middleware is used only if our application is running in development mode, which is exactly what we want. What we did in this class can be repeated in any part of your code as a controller, a service, or whatever needs to be different among the environments.
- 35. 35 As you can see, the only difference between this call and what you saw in the app startup section is that here, we are injecting the IHostingEnvironment into the constructor instead of the Configure method, which is a special case that works only in the startup class. Startup class The Startup class is absolutely the most important class in your application because it defines the pipeline of your web application and registers all the needed middleware components. Because of this, it might be very complex with lots of lines of code. If you add checking for the environment, everything could be even more complicated and difficult to read and maintain. For this reason, ASP.NET Core allows you to use different startup classes: one for each environment you want to manage, and one for different "configure" methods. Let's look at the Program.cs file: Code Listing 4-12 public class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run(); } public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) => WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .UseStartup<Startup>(); } The method .UseStartup<Startup>() is very clever. It can switch between different classes automatically if you are following the right convention (method name + environment name). For example, if you duplicate the Startup class and rename it StartupDevelopment, the extension method will automatically use the new one in the development environment. You can use the same convention for the Startup class methods. So, duplicate the Configure method of the Startup.cs file, call it ConfigureDevelopment, and it will be called instead of the original one only in the development environment. Create your own environment We already mentioned environments like user acceptance test (UAT) or quality assurance (QA), but the IHostingEnvironments interface doesn't offer the methods IsUAT() or IsQualityAssurance. So how can you create one?
- 36. 36 If you think about it, the answer is pretty easy. You assign a new value to the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT variable using a set command in a command shell (QualityAssurance) and create an extension method, like this: Code Listing 4-13 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Environments.Extensions { public static class HostingEnvironmentExtensions { public static bool IsQualityAssurance(this IHostingEnvironment hostingEnvironment) { return hostingEnvironment.EnvironmentName == "QualityAssurance"; } } } Now, keeping with the previous example, we can use the extension method like this: Code Listing 4-14 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; using Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Environments.Extensions; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Startup { private IHostingEnvironment _env; public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env) { _env = env; } public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { }
- 37. 37 public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { if (_env.IsDevelopment() || _env. IsQualityAssurance()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } app.Run(async (context) => { await context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello World!"); }); } } } In subsequent chapters, you will see how to use IHostingEnvironments in views or configuration files. Static files One of the main features of ASP.NET Core is that it can be as lean as you like. This means you are responsible for what you’re going to put into the application, but it also means you can make the application very simple and fast. In fact, if you start your project from an empty ASP.NET Core web application template, the application will not be able to serve static files. If you want to do it, you have to use a specific middleware. A common question is: “Why doesn't it support static files by default if all websites need static files?" The truth is that not all websites need to serve static files, especially on high-traffic applications. In this case, the static files should be hosted by a content delivery network (CDN). Moreover, your web application could be an API application that usually serves data using JSON or XML format instead of images, stylesheets, and JavaScript. Configure static files As you’ll see by reading this book, most of the configurations are managed by middleware components available on NuGet, but thanks to the new metapackage called Microsoft.AspNetCore.App, you don't need to install them each time you need one because the metapackage already includes all the most-needed packages for a web application, including Microsoft.AspNetCore.StaticFiles. In fact, if you check the installed packages of your project, you can see it is already available in your application.
- 38. 38 Figure 4-4: The Microsoft.AspNetCore.App Metapackage Now that you know this, you can edit the Startup.cs file to add the specific middleware. Code Listing 4-15 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; using Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Environments.Extensions; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Startup { private IHostingEnvironment _env; public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env) { _env = env; } public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { }
- 39. 39 public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { if (_env.IsDevelopment() || _env. IsQualityAssurance()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } app.UseStaticFiles(); app.Run(async (context) => { await context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello World!"); }); } } } You are almost ready. The last, but still important, thing to know is that the wwwroot folder present in the root of your project will contain all the static files, so if you want to serve a file called image1.jpg for the request http://localhost:5000/image1.jpg, you have to put it into the root of the wwwroot folder, not in the root of the project folder like you were doing with the previous version of ASP.NET. Single-page application Another scenario where the static-file middleware component combined with an ASP.NET Core application could be very useful is a web app that is a single-page application (SPA). Here is Wikipedia's definition of an SPA3 : A single-page application (SPA) is a web application or website that interacts with the user by dynamically rewriting the current page rather than loading entire new pages from a server. Basically, most of the business logic is present on the client. The server doesn't need to render different views; it just exposes the data to the client. This is available thanks to JavaScript (combined with modern frameworks like Angular, React, and Vue) and a set of APIs (in our case, developed with ASP.NET MVC Core). If there is no server-side rendering, the web server must return a static file when the root domain is called by the browser (http://www.mysite.com). To do that, you have to configure the default documents in the Configure method of your Startup class. 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-page_application
- 40. 40 If you’re okay with the default documents being preconfigured (default.htm, default.html, index.htm, and index.html), it is enough to add UseFileServer: Code Listing 4-16 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; using Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Environments.Extensions; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Startup { private IHostingEnvironment _env; public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env) { _env = env; } public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { if (_env.IsDevelopment() || _env. IsQualityAssurance()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } app.UseFileServer(); app.Run(async (context) => { await context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello World!"); }); } } } Otherwise, if you need to use a specific file with a different name, you can override the default configuration and specify your favorite files as default documents:
- 41. 41 Code Listing 4-17 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; using Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Environments.Extensions; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Startup { private IHostingEnvironment _env; public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env) { _env = env; } public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { if (_env.IsDevelopment() || _env. IsQualityAssurance()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } var options = new DefaultFilesOptions(); options.DefaultFileNames.Clear(); options.DefaultFileNames.Add("mydefault.html"); app.UseDefaultFiles(options); app.UseFileServer(); app.Run(async (context) => { await context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello World!"); }); } } }
- 42. 42 Error handling and exception pages You can write the best code in the world, but you must accept the fact that errors exist and are part of life. From a certain point of view, you could say that a good application is one that can identify an error in the shortest possible amount of time and return the best possible feedback to the user. To achieve this goal, you need to deal with different components, like logging frameworks, exception handling, and custom error pages. We have dedicated a section later in this chapter to logging frameworks, so we are not showing how to configure the logging output here. For now, it is enough to know that out of the box, ASP.NET Core logs all the exceptions, so you don't need to create an exception middleware component of specific code to log unhandled exceptions Of course, if you don't like what comes with the framework, you still have the opportunity to write your own exception handler. The first thing to do is throw an exception into your empty application. Code Listing 4-18 using System; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Startup { public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { app.Run(async context => { if (context.Request.Query.ContainsKey("throw")) { throw new Exception("Exception triggered!"); } await context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello World!"); }); } } }
- 43. 43 If you run the application and add the variable called throw to the query string like this— http://localhost:5000/?throw (in this case, the application is running using Kestrel with the default configuration)—you should receive an output as follows (although the output page could be different for each browser). Figure 4-5: Default 500 Error Developer exception page As you can see, there isn’t useful information, and the feedback isn’t user friendly. This is because ASP.NET, for security reasons, doesn't show the stack trace of the exception by default; the end user should never see this error from the server. This rule is almost always valid, except when the user is a developer creating the application. In that case, it is important to show the error. As demonstrated in the section on environment, it's easy to add this only for a development environment. Fortunately, ASP.NET Core has a better error page than the old YSOD (“yellow screen of death”) generated by the previous version of ASP.NET. To use the new, fancy error page, thanks to the metapackage Microsoft.AspNetCore.App already mentioned, it is enough to add just one line of code into your Startup.cs file. Code Listing 4-19 public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
- 44. 44 //..... other code here } Restart the web server from Visual Studio and refresh the page; the output should contain more useful information. Figure 4-6: Developer Exception Page On this page, there are four important tabs: • Stack: Contains the stack information (line of code and callstack). • Query: Contains all the variables coming from the query string of the request (in this case, there is only one). • Cookies: Contains all the application cookies with their values. • Headers: Contains the HTTP headers of the current request. User-friendly error page For reasons already explained, you can't show the error information in a production environment, so you have to choose between two possible ways: • Redirect the user to a specific error page, passing the status code as part of the URL. • Re-execute the request from a new path.
- 45. 45 Let's see the first option: Code Listing 4-20 app.UseStatusCodePagesWithRedirects("~/errors/{0}.html"); In this case, you should create one page for each status code you want to manage and put it in a folder called errors in the wwwroot folder (combined with the UseStaticFiles middleware component, of course). If you can't use static files, it is enough to remove .html from the string passing through the method, and add a specific route on MVC. If you prefer the second option, using another middleware component will suffice: Code Listing 4-21 app.UseStatusCodePagesWithReExecute("~/errors/{0}"); Finally, your error management could be like this: Code Listing 4-22 if (_env.IsDevelopment()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } else { app.UseStatusCodePagesWithRedirects("~/errors/{0}.html"); } Configuration files The way ASP.NET Core handles configuration files changed significantly with the new version. Before ASP.NET Core, you used the AppSettings section of the web.config file, but since the first version of ASP.NET Core, web.config is not needed anymore, unless you are hosting your application on Internet Information Services (IIS). If the AppSettings section is not needed anymore, how can you store your information? The answer is simple. You use external files (you can have more than one). Fortunately, there is a set of classes that helps manage that. And although it may seem more uncomfortable, it isn’t. First, choose the file format you prefer. The most common format is JSON, but if you are more familiar with XML, use it. JSON format Let's suppose we have an appSettings.json file like this:
- 46. 46 Code Listing 4-23 { "database": { "databaseName": "my-db-name", "serverHost": "mySqlHost", "port": 1433, "username": "username", "password": "password" }, "facebook": { "appId": "app-id", "appSecret": "app-secret" }, "smtp": { "host": "mysuperhost.mysuperdomain.com", "username": "imperugo@gmail.com", "password": "my-super-secret-password", "enableSsl": true, "port": 587 } } The more comfortable way to have all this information in a C# application is by using a class with a set of properties. In a perfect world, it would be a class with the same structure of JSON, like this: Code Listing 4-24 namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Environments { public class Configuration { public DatabaseConfiguration Database { get; set; } public FacebookConfiguration Facebook { get; set; } public SmtpConfiguration SmtpConfiguration { get; set; } } public class DatabaseConfiguration { public string DatabaseName { get; set; } public string ServerHost { get; set; } public int Port { get; set; } public string Username { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public string ConnectionString => $"Server=tcp:{ServerHost},{Port};Database={DatabaseName};User
- 47. 47 ID={Username};Password={Password};Encrypt=True;TrustServerCertificate=False ;Connection Timeout=30;"; } public class FacebookConfiguration { public string AppId { get; set; } public string AppSecret { get; set; } } public class SmtpConfiguration { public string Host { get; set; } public string Username { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public bool EnableSsl { get; set; } public int Port { get; set; } } } At this point, it remains to hydrate the C# classes with the values from the JSON file. If you called your configuration file, appSettings.json, it comes out of the box (thanks to the new WebHostBuilder), and you can skip this code block. Otherwise, you have to modify the Program.cs file in order to specify your configurations (you could have more than one), like this: Code Listing 4-25 using Microsoft.AspNetCore; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run(); } public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) => WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureAppConfiguration((builderContext, config) => {
- 48. 48 IHostingEnvironment env = builderContext.HostingEnvironment; config.AddJsonFile("mySettingsFile.json", optional: false, reloadOnChange: true); }) .UseStartup<Startup>(); } } Now you have to move into the Startup class in order to read the configuration, and this is possible by requiring the IConfiguration interface from the constructor: Code Listing 4-26 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; using Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Environments; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Startup { private readonly IHostingEnvironment _env; private readonly Configuration _myConfiguration; public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env, IConfiguration configuration) { _env = env; _myConfiguration = new Configuration(); configuration.Bind(_myConfiguration); } public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { services.AddMvc(); } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { if (_env.IsDevelopment()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } else {
- 49. 49 app.UseStatusCodePagesWithRedirects("~/errors/{0}.html"); } app.UseMvcWithDefaultRoute(); } } } Manage different environments We already explained the importance of having different environments, and how to manage them via C#. The same applies to the configuration. More than ever, you now need different configuration files—one for each environment. Thanks to ASP.NET Core, this is easy to manage. To take advantage of what the framework offers, you have to follow a few rules: the first one is related to configuring file names. For different files, having one for each environment allows you to add the environment name into the file name. For example, appSettings.json for the development environment must be called appSettings.Development.json, and appSettings.Production.json would be used for a production environment. The second rule is related to the differences among the files. You don't need to have the complete JSON copied in each configuration file because ASP.NET Core will merge the files, overriding only what is specified in the environment configuration file. To understand what this means, imagine you have the same database instance, but a different database name. You can log into the database server using the same credentials, but the same server hosts both from production to development; it just switches the database. To cover this scenario and keep using the appSettings.json file you used before, look at the appSettings.Development.json file: Code Listing 4-27 { "database": { "databaseName": "my-development-db-name" } } And look at appSettings.Production.json: Code Listing 4-28 { "database": { "databaseName": "my-production-db-name"
- 50. 50 } } This is awesome because you can keep the configuration files very lean, but now you need to educate ASP.NET Core on how to handle multiple configuration files. To do that, change the code you wrote previously to this: Code Listing 4-29 using Microsoft.AspNetCore; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run(); } public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) => WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureAppConfiguration((builderContext, config) => { IHostingEnvironment env = builderContext.HostingEnvironment; config .AddJsonFile("mySettingsFile.json", optional: false, reloadOnChange: true) .AddJsonFile($"mySettingsFile.{env.EnvironmentName} .json", optional: true, reloadOnChange: true); }) .UseStartup<Startup>(); } } Now, for a development environment, you will get my-development-db-name as the database name; otherwise, it will be named my-production-db-name. Remember to keep the same JSON structure in your environment configuration files.
- 51. 51 Dependency injection This last part is related to the use of the configuration values across the application, such as the controller, services, and whatever else needs to read the configuration values. Register the instance of the configuration class you created earlier to the ASP.NET Core dependency injection container. As usual, go into the Startup.cs class and register the instance. Code Listing 4-30 public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { services.AddSingleton(_myConfiguration); } For configuration scenarios, the Singleton lifecycle is the best option. To get the values into the services, inject the instance on the constructor. Code Listing 4-31 namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Environments { public class MySimpleService { private readonly Configuration configuration; public MySimpleService(Configuration configuration) { this.configuration = configuration; } } } Logging Logging is very important in a web application, and it is very difficult to implement. This is why so many logging frameworks are available. Search the term "logging" on nuget.org, and you’ll see there are more than 3,300 packages.
- 52. 52 Figure 4-7: NuGet Logging Packages Of course, not all of the packages are logging frameworks, but almost all are related to logging. Logging is very individualized; it is related to the particular environment or application you are working on. Modern applications are composed of several packages. The combination of several logging frameworks and several packages makes the logging ecosystem very complicated. What happens if each package uses its own logging framework, or one that is different from the one used in your application? It would be a complicated mess to configure each one for each environment. You’d probably spend a lot of time configuring logging instead of writing good code. To solve this problem, before ASP.NET Core, there was a library called Common.Logging .NET (the official repository is on GitHub) that provided a simple logging abstraction to switch between different logging implementations, like log4net, NLog, and Serilog. It would be pretty cool if all packages used this, because you could configure the logging once in a single place. Unfortunately, this doesn't allow you to log the code that comes from the .NET Framework, because it doesn't have dependencies as opposed to external libraries.
- 53. 53 With ASP.NET Core, this problem is completely solved. You don't have to use the Common.Logging .NET library because the framework offers something similar out of the box, and it is integrated with all the packages. Configuring logging First of all, you have to choose the output of the log you want—for example, console application, TraceSource, EventLog, and so on. Kestrel could be very helpful to use the console output, but thanks to the metapackage Microsoft.AspNetCore.App, you are ready to use the following providers: • Console: The output will be printed into the console application (useful for Kestrel). • Debug: The output will be printed into the debug windows in Visual Studio. • EventSource: Useful if you like to analyze your logs using PerfView. • TraceSource: This one is useful if you are running on .NET Framework instead of .NET Core. You can learn more about it here. Instead of using the Startup class like you did before now, you have to work on the Program.cs file in order to configure your logging. This is an important change that comes with version 2.x (with version 1.x of ASP.NET Core, the logging configuration was part of the Startup.cs file). Visual Studio (and Visual Studio Code) offers an incredible feature called IntelliSense, so when we type logging, it suggests all the available options to us. Figure 4-9: Configuring Logging Let's see the Program.cs file. Code Listing 4-32 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
- 54. 54 using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run(); } public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) => WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureLogging((hostingContext, logbuilder) => { logbuilder.AddConsole(); logbuilder.AddDebug(); }) .UseStartup<Startup>(); } } Testing logging The best part of this logging system is that it is natively used by the ASP.NET Core framework. When running the application, you should see the following output. Figure 4-10: Running a Web Application Using Kestrel
- 55. 55 Figure 4-11: Web Application Console Output Each request is logged twice: first when the server receives the request, and second when the server completes the request. In the figure, there are four logs in two groups: the first when the browser requests the page, and the second when it requests the favicon. Change log verbosity Without tuning the configuration, the log implementations write all information into the output. To restrict large amounts of data in the log output, you can configure it to log only information starting from a specific level. ASP.NET Core logging has six levels: • Trace = 0 • Debug = 1 • Information = 2 • Warning = 3 • Error = 4 • Critical = 5 In a production environment, you probably want to log starting from the Warning or Error level. Compared to version 1.x of ASP.NET Core, the way you can specify the minimum log level is different. With ASP.NET Core 1.x, you were able to specify a function to the method AddConsole; now it is possible to do the same thing using the ILogBuilder interface, as shown in the following code: Code Listing 4-33 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore;
- 56. 56 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration; using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging; using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Console; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup { public class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { CreateWebHostBuilder(args).Build().Run(); } public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) => WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureLogging((hostingContext, logbuilder) => { if(hostingContext.HostingEnvironment.IsProduction()) { logbuilder.SetMinimumLevel(LogLevel.Warning); } else { logbuilder.SetMinimumLevel(LogLevel.Debug); } logbuilder.AddConsole(); }) .UseStartup<Startup>(); } } Personally, I don't like this code, because you have to use an if statement to change the logging configuration. Fortunately, ILogBuilder offers another way to change the logging behavior via the configuration file: Code Listing 4-34 public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) => WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureLogging((hostingContext, logbuilder) => { logbuilder.AddConfiguration(hostingContext.Configuratio n.GetSection("Logging")); logbuilder.AddConsole();
- 57. 57 }) .UseStartup<Startup>(); In this way, it is enough to specify the correct logging configuration into your configuration file: Code Listing 4-35 { "Logging": { "LogLevel": { "Default": "Debug", "System": "Information", "Microsoft": "Information" }, "Console": { "IncludeScopes": true } } } More information about logging with ASP.NET Core 2.x is available here. Add log to your application You’ve seen how to configure the log and its output with the .NET Core Framework, but you didn't see how to use it in classes. Thanks to dependency injection, it is very easy: just inject the logger instance into the constructor and use it. The class to inject is ILogger<T>, where T is the class that needs to be logged: Code Listing 4-36 using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Logging { public class MyService { private readonly ILogger<MyService> _logger; public MyService(ILogger<MyService> logger) { _logger = logger; } public void DoSomething()
- 58. 58 { _logger.LogInformation("Doing something ..."); //.... do something } } } Create a custom logger We are not going to explain how to create your own custom logger, but there are several repositories where you can see how to do that. Here is a short list: • Serilog • Elmah.io • Loggr • NLog • Slack • MongoDb Health checks Health checks are a new feature introduced with ASP.NET Core 2.2 that allows an ASP.NET Core application to report its own health status over an HTTP endpoint. These endpoints can be used by networking or orchestration infrastructure to decide whether to direct traffic to the application. For example, a load balancer might decide to take out the application from the pool if it becomes unhealthy, and wait till it becomes healthy again before re-including it. Also, health monitoring tools can check and report the status of applications. Basic checks By default, ASP.NET Core provides only a basic health check, which tells whether the app is running or not. But more advanced probes can be developed, to check, for example, memory or disk usage, and even dependencies such as database connections or external services. Let's see how to configure the basic health check. All that is needed is adding two lines of code, one in the ConfigureServices and one in the Configure methods. Code Listing 4-37 public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { ...
- 59. 59 services.AddHealthChecks(); ... } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env) { ... app.UseHealthChecks("/health"); ... } The first configures the service to register different health checks, and the second registers the middleware to respond on the endpoint /health. Database checks This basic probe does nothing more than return Healthy if the application is running. But more sophisticated probes can be added, either by writing your own (by implementing the IHealthCheck interface) or by using some contributed by the community, like package BeatPulse, which provides many different health checks for lots of different database engines, queues, caches, and so on. To add the SQL Server check, just modify the call to AddHealthChecks by specifying the additional check you want to run. Code Listing 4-38 services.AddHealthChecks() .AddSqlServer(Configuration["ConnectionStrings:DefaultConnection"]); Since this a community feature, you need to install the NuGet package AspNetCore.HealthChecks.SqlServer. This just checks that your app can connect to the database server and can run a simple query (the BeatPulse probe executes SELECT 1), but doesn't say anything about your specific database. If you use Entity Framework to connect to your database, you can also check that the database has been correctly created with all tables needed. Code Listing 4-39 services.AddHealthChecks() .AddDbContextCheck<MyAppDbContext>();
- 60. 60 Application readiness and liveness In some cases, an application might be functioning, but not be ready to respond to requests. This could be an application with a long start-up time, for example initializing a cache, or similar long operations. In this case, we can differentiate two type of states: • Readiness: Indicates when an app can respond to requests. • Liveness: Indicates when the app is functional. Normally the readiness check is only performed when an application has just been started, to make sure the load balancer or orchestrator can start directing traffic. After the application becomes "ready," only the liveness check is performed. Additional customization The health check system is widely customizable. You can specify to run the health endpoint on a separate port, by passing its value in the call to the UseHealthChecks function. Code Listing 4-40 app.UseHealthChecks("/health", port: 5002); Another behavior you can change is the output format. The default behavior is to return Unhealthy if one of the checks fails, and Healthy if all the checks succeed. However, you might want to also see the details of all checks, or have your custom output for a specific load balancer or monitoring software. You can do this by specifying the custom response writer. The following code listing shows how to code a simple writer that returns the status of each individual check. Code Listing 4-41 app.UseHealthChecks("/health", new HealthCheckOptions() { // This custom writer formats the detailed status as JSON. ResponseWriter = WriteResponse }); ... private static Task WriteResponse(HttpContext httpContext, HealthReport result) { var sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.Append($"Overall status: {result.Status}"+Environment.NewLine); foreach (var entry in result.Entries) {
- 61. 61 sb.Append($" - {entry.Key} : {entry.Value.Status}" + Environment.NewLine); } return httpContext.Response.WriteAsync(sb.ToString()); } Conclusion In this chapter, you learned how to use middleware components to implement features needed by web applications, such as static files, exception handling, dependency injection, hosting, and environment. Other cool features are also available, like data protection and caching. To find out more, go to www.asp.net.
- 62. 62 Chapter 5 Beyond the Basics: Application Frameworks HTTP isn’t just for serving up webpages; it’s also for serving APIs that expose services and data over HTTP protocol. This chapter will gently introduce you to managing these scenarios using ASP.NET MVC, which hasn't changed much from the previous version. You’ll manage controllers, views, APIs, and the newest and coolest tag helper, and you’ll play with the view components. But before proceeding, it’s important to know that the part related to MVC is just a small introduction. A complex framework like this would easily require its own book. This book targets ASP.NET. Web API A web API (application programming interface) is a set of subroutine definitions with the scope of managing data between clients and servers. Over the last few years, the trend has been to build APIs over HTTP protocol, allowing third-party apps to interact with a server with the help of the application protocol. Probably the most well-known example is Facebook, which allows users to share content and posts, manage pages, and do more from any client, such as a mobile app or desktop. This is due to a set of APIs and HTTP, but how does it work? The good thing about using HTTP protocol is that there are no major differences from classic web navigation, except for the result. In normal HTTP navigation, when we use a browser to call www.tostring.it, the server returns HTML. For APIs, it returns data using JSON format. The result could also be XML or any other type of structured data. The point is that the result doesn't contain any information about the layout or interaction, like CSS and JavaScript. With the previous version of ASP.NET, a specific library managed APIs, called Web API. This library doesn’t exist with the newest version, and you can handle API and classic requests using the same framework, because Web API has merged into the MVC framework. This is the primary difference between the old ASP.NET and the new. When you think about what we were using in the previous version, it makes absolute sense. Most of the code between the two frameworks was similar. Think about the controller, attributes, and dependency injection—same code, different namespaces. Installation ASP.NET MVC Core is not different from what we saw in the previous chapters; you don't have to install it because it is included in Microsoft.AspNetCore.App.
- 63. 63 Once it’s installed, register the service and configure it within your web application like this. Code Listing 5-1 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebApi { public class Startup { private IHostingEnvironment _env; public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env) { _env = env; } public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { services.AddMvc(); } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { if (_env.IsDevelopment()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } app.UseMvcWithDefaultRoute(); } } } Playing around with URLs and verbs Because you are managing data and not HTML pages, HTTP verbs are key to understanding what the client needs. There is a kind of convention that almost all API implementations respect, which uses different HTTP verbs according to the type of action needed. Suppose we have the request api/users.
- 64. 64 Table 1: Handling the Request api/users Resource Sample Read (GET Verb) Insert (POST Verb) Update (PUT Verb) Partially Update (PATCH Verb) Delete (DELETE Verb) Action Gets a list of users Creates a user Update users with batch update Batch-updates users only with the attributes present in the request Errors or deletes all users, depending on what you want Response List of users New user or redirect to the URL to get the single user No payload; only HTTP status code No payload; only HTTP status code No payload; only HTTP status code If we want to manage a single user, the request should be api/users/1, where 1 is the ID of the user we want to work with. Table 2: Handling the request api/users/1 Resource Sample Read (GET Verb) Insert (POST Verb) Update (PUT Verb) Partially Update (PATCH Verb) Delete (DELETE Verb) Action Gets a single user Return an error because the user already exists Update the specified user Partially updates the user only with the attributes present in the request Deletes the specified user Response Single user No payload; only HTTP status code Updated user or redirect to the URL to get the single user The updated user (complete object) or redirect to the URL to get the single user No payload; only HTTP status code To summarize, the URL combined with the HTTP verb allows you to understand what has to be done: • /api is the prefix indicating that the request is an API request and not a classic web request. • users is the MVC controller. • verb identifies the action to execute.
- 65. 65 Return data from an API Now that everything is correctly configured, you can create your first MVC controller. Not to deviate too much from what you used in the previous version, let's create a folder called Controllers. Although not mandatory, the best practice is to create a folder for all the API controllers to separate the API’s from the standard controllers. Code Listing 5-2 using System.Linq; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebApi.Controllers.APIs { [Route("api/[controller]")] public class UsersController : Controller { [HttpGet] public User[] Get() { return new[] { new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname = "Lattanzi", Twitter = "@imperugo"}, new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname = "Chiaretta", Twitter = "@simonech"}, }; } [HttpGet("{id}")] public User Get(int id) { var users = new[] { new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname = "Lattanzi", Twitter = "@imperugo"}, new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname = "Chiaretta", Twitter = "@simonech"}, }; return users.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Id == id); } } public class User { public int Id { get; set; }
- 66. 66 public string Firstname { get; set; } public string Lastname { get; set; } public string Twitter { get; set; } } } As you can see, the controller is simple and the code is not so different from the previous version. Let’s analyze this step by step. [Route("api/[controller]")] This says that the controller can manage all the requests with the api prefix in the URL. Basically, if the URL doesn't start with /api, the controller will never handle the request. (This is helpful for all the mixed applications that need to handle APIs and other contents like MVC stuff). [HttpGet] This attribute specifies the verb for the action it is decorating. You could use all the possible verbs: HttpGet, HttpPost, HttpPut, and so on. Update data using APIs You just saw how to return data as well as partially read input information from the query string. Unfortunately, this is not so useful when you have to send a lot of data from the client to the server because there is a limit related to the number of characters you can add to the URL. For this reason, you have to move to another verb. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1) doesn't specify limits for the length of a query string, but limits are imposed by web browsers and server software. You can find more info here. This approach is not so different from what you saw before. The only difference is the place where the data comes from: the body instead of the query string. Code Listing 5-3 // Adding user [HttpPost] public IActionResult Update([FromBody] User user) { var users = new List<User>(); users.Add(user); return new CreatedResult($"/api/users/{user.Id}", user); }
- 67. 67 //Deleting user [HttpDelete] public IActionResult Delete([FromQuery] int id) { var users = new List<User> { new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname = "Lattanzi", Twitter = "@imperugo"}, new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname = "Chiaretta", Twitter = "@simonech"}, }; var user = users.SingleOrDefault(x => x.Id == id); if (user != null) { users.Remove(user); return new EmptyResult(); } return new NotFoundResult(); } As you can see, the only differences are the following: • [FromBody]: This specifies that data comes from the payload of the HTTP request. • return new CreatedResult($"/api/users/{user.Id}", user);: This returns the created object and the URL where the client can get the user again. The status code is 201 (created). • return new EmptyResult();: Basically, this means status code 200 (OK). The response body is empty. • return new NotFoundResult();: This is the 404 message that is used when the requested client can’t be found. Testing APIs A browser can be used to test the API because APIs are being implemented over HTTP, but there are other applications that can help with this, too. One popular application is Postman, which can be downloaded for free here. The following screenshots show how to test the code we used previously.
- 68. 68 Retrieve users (/api/users using GET): Figure 5-1: Using Postman to Test REST Endpoint-1 Retrieve one user (/api/users/1 using GET): Figure 5-2: Using Postman to Test REST Endpoint-2
- 69. 69 Create user (/api/users using POST): Figure 5-3: Using Postman to Test REST Endpoint-3
- 70. 70 Delete user (/api/users?id=2 using DELETE): Figure 5-4: Using Postman to Test REST Endpoint-4 ASP.NET MVC Core As mentioned in the previous section, ASP.NET MVC isn't different than Web API, so the code you are going to see here will be very similar, except for the result. Because you already registered ASP.NET MVC for APIs, you can jump directly to the code. In the same folder (Controller) where you created UserController, you can create another controller with the scope of serving the main page of the website. In this case, call it HomeController. Code Listing 5-4 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc.Controllers.MVC { public class HomeController : Controller { [HttpGet] public IActionResult Index() {
- 71. 71 return View(); } } } This code is similar to the API controller; the only differences are the missing route attribute on the controller and the View method used to return the action. The first one is not needed because you don't have to override the default routing configuration (we will discuss this later in the chapter), and the second one indicates to the controller that it has to render a view, not JSON. If you try to run this code, you'll get an error like this: Figure 5-5: Unable to Find the MVC View This happens because the MVC framework cannot find the view file, but how does it locate the file? The logic behind it is very simple: if you don't specify any information about the view, everything happens using conventions. First, it is important to know that all the views are placed in the folder Views in the root of the project, as you can see in the following screenshot.
- 72. 72 Figure 5-6: The Views Folder Inside, there must be a folder for each MVC controller you created. In this case, you have just one controller called HomeController, so you must create the folder Home inside Views. Finally, it's time to create our views. Visual Studio 2017 makes it really simple to do. Figure 5-7: The Views Folder for the Home Controller
- 73. 73 Figure 5-8: Adding the View-1 Figure 5-9: Adding the View-2
- 74. 74 Now, if you open the newest file, you’ll see that it is almost empty. It contains just a few strange sections that you’ll recognize because they have different colors and use @ in the beginning. These parts are managed server-side and contain instructions on how to change the output to render the final HTML. Everything is possible thanks to Razor, the view engine embedded within ASP.NET MVC Core A good introduction to Razor syntax is available here. Because you have to render a webpage, you first have to create the right markup, so let's add the following code to our view. Code Listing 5-5 <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Hello World</title> </head> <body> <h1>Hello World</h1> </body> </html> When you run the application again, the result should not be an error, but a simple HTML page. Figure 5-10: Server-Side Page Rendered Using MVC This is definitely an improvement, but you’re returning just a static file; there isn’t any kind of transformation. But that isn’t needed to use MVC because you already have a specific middleware component to manage static files. To make the view more elaborate and to use something from the server, you have to go back to the controller and send the data to the view.
- 75. 75 Code Listing 5-6 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc; using Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc.Models; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc.Controllers.MVC { public class HomeController : Controller { [HttpGet] public IActionResult Index() { var users = new[] { new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname = "Lattanzi", Twitter = "@imperugo"}, new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname = "Chiaretta", Twitter = "@simonech"}, }; return View(users); } } } Notice that we have reused the class User previously created for the API response. This code doesn't need explanation; you’re just sending an array of users as a model to a View method. In our view, it’s time to get users from the controller and print the data to the page. The first thing to do is to specify what kind of model the view is using. In our case, it’s IEnumerable<User>. Code Listing 5-7 @model IEnumerable<Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc.Models.User> <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Hello World</title> </head> <body> <h1>Hello World</h1> </body> </html> Now you have to iterate all the users from the model and show the data.
- 76. 76 Code Listing 5-8 @model IEnumerable<Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc.Models.User> <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Hello World</title> </head> <body> <h1>Users</h1> <div> @foreach(var user in Model) { <hr /> <p>Firstname: @user.Firstname</p> <p>Lastname: @user.Lastname</p> <p>Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@user.Twitter"> @user.Twitter</a></p> } </div> </body> </html> The output should be something like this: Figure 5-11: Server-Side Page Rendered Using MVC for a List Routing You just saw a small introduction to ASP.NET MVC. Notice that HomeController, combined with the Index action, handles the root domain (http://localhost:5000 in our case). But why?
- 77. 77 To get the answer, you have to go back to the MVC configuration where we wrote this code: Code Listing 5-9 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.Mvc { public class Startup { public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { services.AddMvc(); } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory) { loggerFactory.AddConsole(); if (env.IsDevelopment()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } app.UseMvcWithDefaultRoute(); } } } The method app.UseMvcWithDefaultRoute() defines the default route; it is equivalent to writing the following: Code Listing 5-10 app.UseMvc(routes => { routes.MapRoute( name: "default", template: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}"); }); This part of code says to split the URL into segments, where the first is the controller, the second is the action, and the third (optional) is the parameter. If they are all missing, use the action Index of HomeController.
- 78. 78 In fact, if you run the application again and write the following URL, the output should be the same: http://localhost:5000/home/index In you want to manage a URL like http://localhost:5000/products, it’s enough to create a ProductController with an Index action. View-specific features After seeing the general features of ASP.NET Core MVC, it is time to see two new features that are specific to the view side of ASP.NET MVC applications: • Tag Helpers • View components Tag Helpers are a new way of exposing server-side code that renders HTML elements. They bring the same features of HTML Razor helpers to the easier-to-use syntax of standard HTML elements. View components can be seen as either a more powerful version of partial views, or a less convoluted way to develop child actions. Let's look in detail at both of these new features. Tag Helpers Compared to HTML Razor helpers, Tag Helpers look very much like standard HTML elements—no more switching context between HTML and Razor syntax. Let's see an example to make things a bit clearer. If you want to make an editing form with ASP.NET MVC, you have to display a text box that takes the value from the view model, renders validation results, and so on. Using the previous HTML Razor helpers, you would have written: @Html.TextBoxFor(m=>m.FirstName) But now with Tag Helpers, you can directly write <input asp-for="FirstName" /> without introducing the Razor syntax. Notice that it's just a normal HTML <input> tag enhanced with the special attribute asp-for. It doesn't look like such a big change, but the advantage becomes clear when you add more attributes. One example of this is the class attribute. This is how you add the class using the old HTML Razor syntax: @Html.TextBoxFor(m=>m.FirstName, new { @class = "form-control" })
- 79. 79 Using the Tag Helper, it's just this: <input asp-for="FirstName" class="form-control" />. Basically, you write the tag like you were writing a static HTML tag, with the addition of the special asp-for. But this new syntax retains the support of Visual Studio IntelliSense. As soon as you start typing an HTML element that is somehow enhanced via Tag Helpers, you see in the IntelliSense menu that the tag is represented with an icon that is different from normal HTML tags. Figure 5-12: Visual Studio IntelliSense for HTML Tags If you then trigger the IntelliSense menu to see all the available attributes, only one has the same icon again, the asp-for attribute. Once you add this attribute and open the IntelliSense menu again, you’ll see all methods and properties of the page model. Figure 5-13: Visual Studio IntelliSense for MVC Model Look at the two previous screenshots carefully. You'll notice that the <input> tag has changed color. The following figure highlights the difference. Figure 5-14: Difference Between the Two Tags
- 80. 80 In the first line, the element is brown with attributes in red. In the second, the element is purple with the special attribute also in purple (the normal attribute is still red). Visual Studio recognizes both normal HTML tags and attributes, and Tag Helpers. This avoids confusion when editing a view. ASP.NET Core MVC comes with a lot of Tag Helpers; most of them are just re-implementing the same HTML Razor helpers used to edit forms, like the input, form, label, and select elements. But there are other Tag Helpers used to manage cache, render different HTML elements based on the environment, and manage script fallback or CSS files. You can see many of these Tag Helpers used in the ViewShared_Layout.cshtml file in the default project template. A reduced version of the file (without the body) is available in the following code listing. Code Listing 5-11 <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" /> <title>@ViewData["Title"] - ViewHelpers</title> <environment include="Development"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="~/lib/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.css" /> </environment> <environment exclude="Development"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter- bootstrap/4.1.3/css/bootstrap.min.css" asp-fallback- href="~/lib/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" asp-fallback-test-class="sr-only" asp-fallback-test- property="position" asp-fallback-test-value="absolute" integrity="sha256- eSi1q2PG6J7g7ib17yAaWMcrr5GrtohYChqibrV7PBE="/> </environment> <link rel="stylesheet" href="~/css/site.css" /> </head> <body> [...] <environment include="Development"> <script src="~/lib/jquery/dist/jquery.js"></script> <script src="~/lib/bootstrap/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.js"></script> </environment> <environment exclude="Development">
- 81. 81 <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js" asp-fallback-src="~/lib/jquery/dist/jquery.min.js" asp-fallback-test="window.jQuery" crossorigin="anonymous" integrity="sha256- FgpCb/KJQlLNfOu91ta32o/NMZxltwRo8QtmkMRdAu8="> </script> <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter- bootstrap/4.1.3/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" asp-fallback- src="~/lib/bootstrap/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" asp-fallback-test="window.jQuery && window.jQuery.fn && window.jQuery.fn.modal" crossorigin="anonymous" integrity="sha256- E/V4cWE4qvAeO5MOhjtGtqDzPndRO1LBk8lJ/PR7CA4="> </script> </environment> <script src="~/js/site.js" asp-append-version="true"></script> @RenderSection("Scripts", required: false) </body> </html> Building custom Tag Helpers Tag Helpers are easy to create, so it's worth seeing how to create your own. Writing a custom Tag Helper is especially useful when you want to output an HTML snippet that is long and repetitive, but changes very little from one instance to another, or when you want to somehow modify the content of an element. As an example, you are going to create a Tag Helper that automatically creates a link by just specifying the URL. Something that takes this: Code Listing 5-12 <url>https://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/ebooks</url>
- 82. 82 And creates a working a tag, like this: Code Listing 5-13 <a href="https://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/ebooks">https://www.s yn cfusion.com/resources/techportal/ebooks</a> Start by creating a UrlTagHelper file inside the MVC project. A good convention is to put the file inside a TagHelpers folder. A Tag Helper is a class that inherits from TagHelper and defines its behavior by overriding the method Process, or its asynchronous counterpart, ProcessAsync. These methods have two arguments: • context: Contains information on the current execution context (even if it is rarely used). • output: Contains a model of the original HTML tag and its content, and is the object that has to be modified by the Tag Helper. To use a Tag Helper in the views, you have to tell both Visual Studio and the .NET Core framework where to find them. This is done by adding a reference in the _ViewImports.cshtml file. Code Listing 5-14 @addTagHelper *, Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.TagHelpers @addTagHelper "*, MvcSample" To make sure all the basic steps are done, copy the following code into the UrlTagHelper file. Code Listing 5-15 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Razor.TagHelpers; namespace MvcSample.TagHelpers { public class UrlTagHelper: TagHelper { public override void Process(TagHelperContext context, TagHelperOutput output) { output.TagName = "a"; } } }
- 83. 83 This Tag Helper, at the moment, is useless. It only replaced the tag used when calling the helper from whatever it was (a URL in our example) to a tag, but it doesn't create an href attribute pointing to the specified URL. To do so, you have to read the content of the element and create a new attribute. Since the content could also be a Razor expression, the method to do so is an Async method, output.GetChildContentAsync(). You also have to change the method you implemented from Process to ProcessAsync. The complete Tag Helper is shown in the following code listing. Code Listing 5-16 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Razor.TagHelpers; namespace MvcSample.TagHelpers { public class UrlTagHelper: TagHelper { public override async Task ProcessAsync(TagHelperContext context, TagHelperOutput output) { output.TagName = "a"; var content = await output.GetChildContentAsync(); output.Attributes.SetAttribute("href", content.GetContent()); } } } Tag Helpers can also have attributes. You can extend the URL Tag Helper to specify the target of the link. To add an attribute to a Tag Helper, add a property to the class. In the case of the target, you just need to add public string Target { get; set; } to the class. But having a string parameter is not a nice experience because IntelliSense doesn't show which values are allowed. You can define the property as an enum whose values are only the ones allowed for the target HTML attribute. Then, you have nice IntelliSense. Figure 5-15: HTML Property Suggestion
- 84. 84 This is the code of the updated Tag Helper: Code Listing 5-17 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Razor.TagHelpers; namespace MvcSample.TagHelpers { public enum TargetEnum { None = 0, Blank, Parent, Self, Top } public class UrlTagHelper: TagHelper { public TargetEnum Target { get; set; } public override async Task ProcessAsync(TagHelperContext context, TagHelperOutput output) { output.TagName = "a"; var content = await output.GetChildContentAsync(); output.Attributes.SetAttribute("href", content.GetContent()); if (Target!=TargetEnum.None) { output.Attributes.SetAttribute("target", "_"+Target.ToString().ToLowerInvariant()); } } } } Now, <url target="Blank">http://example.com</url> is rendered as <a href="http://example.com" target="_blank">http://example.com</a>. View components View components are the next new, view-related feature. In a way, they are similar to partial views, but they are much more powerful, and are used to solve different problems. A partial view is, as the name implies, a view. It is typically used to simplify complex views by splitting them into reusable parts. Partial views have access to the view model of the parent page and don't have complex logic.
- 85. 85 On the other hand, view components don't have access to the page model; they only operate on the arguments that are passed to them, and they are composed by both view and class with the logic. If you used a child action in previous versions of ASP.NET MVC, view components more or less solve the same problem in a more elegant way, as their execution doesn’t go through the whole ASP.NET MVC execution pipeline starting from the routing. Typically, view controllers are used to render reusable pieces of pages that also include logic that might involve hitting a database—for example, sidebars, menus, and conditional login panels. How to write a View component As mentioned, a view component is made of two parts. The class containing the logic extends the ViewComponent class and must implement either the Invoke or the InvokeAsync method. This returns IViewComponentResult with the model that has to be passed to the view. Conventionally, all view components are located in a folder named ViewComponents in the root of the project. The view is just like any other view. It receives the model passed by the component class that is accessed via the Model variable. The view for a view component has to be saved in the ViewsSharedComponents<component-name>Default.cshtml file. As an example, let's build a view component that shows the sidebar of a blog. The component class just calls an external repository to fetch the list of links. Code Listing 5-18 using System.Threading.Tasks; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc; using MvcSample.Services; namespace MvcSample.ViewComponents { public class SideBarViewComponent: ViewComponent { private readonly ILinkRepository db; public SideBarViewComponent(ILinkRepository repository) { db = repository; } public async Task<IViewComponentResult> InvokeAsync(int max=10) { var items = await db.GetLinks().Take(max); return View(items); } } }
- 86. 86 Notice that it receives the dependency in the constructor, as shown for controllers in ASP.NET Core MVC. In this case, since the operation of retrieving the links goes to a database, you implement the Async version of the component. The next step is implementing the view. Nothing special to mention here, just a simple view that renders a list of links. Code Listing 5-19 @model IEnumerable<MvcSample.Model.Link> <h3>Blog Roll</h3> <ul> @foreach (var link in Model) { <li><a href="@link.Url">@link.Title</a></li> } </ul> The important thing to remember is where this view is located. Following convention, it must be saved as ViewsSharedComponentsSidebarDefault.cshtml. Now it’s time to include the component in a view. This is done by simply calling the view component using the Razor syntax. Code Listing 5-20 @await Component.InvokeAsync("SideBar", new {max = 5}) This is a bit convoluted, especially the need to create an anonymous class just for passing the arguments. But there is also another way of calling a view component as if it were a Tag Helper. All view components are also registered as Tag Helpers with the prefix vc. Code Listing 5-21 <vc:side-bar max="5"></vc:side-bar> Apart from being easier to write, this also implements IntelliSense in the HTML editor. Figure 5-16: IntelliSense for Tag Helpers
- 87. 87 Razor Pages If you have to create dynamic pages but you don't want to use MVC, or you are looking to use a different approach, ASP.NET Core 2.x introduces a new way to create dynamic markup. It is called Razor Pages, and it uses the powerful Razor engine, without the part related to the model and controller that you already saw in the MVC section. Since it is built on top of MVC, the first thing to be sure of is that MVC is registered and configured into your application exactly in the same way you do for a classic model-view- controller application: Code Listing 5-22 public class Startup { public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { services.AddMvc(); } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { app.UseMvc(); } } Now the application is almost ready to host some Razor Pages, but in order to do so, you have to follow some conventions. The first one is where the pages are located. You have to put them into a folder called Pages in the root of your application. To help with this, if you are using Visual Studio, you have a helpful context menu when you right-click on the folder. Follow these steps to create your first Razor Page:
- 88. 88 Figure 5-17: “Add Razor Page” Menu Item Figure 5-18: Add Scaffold Page Dialog
- 89. 89 Figure 5-19: Add Razor Page Dialog After going through these steps, an empty page is created in the Pages folder. If you now run the project, you can see your page in the browser. The Index page shows up by default; otherwise, you have to write the name of your page without the extension in the URL http://localhost:5000/myRazorPage. Before going on and creating something more useful than a blank page, go back to the Solution Explorer and take a look at the file called Index.cshtml.cs. It is somewhat reminiscent of the code-behind used with Web Forms, but it is not the same. In fact, if you open the .cs file, you don't have all the things you had with Web Forms (Page_Load and so on). This .cshtml.cs file contains the PageModel class. 5-20: PageModel class
- 90. 90 If we have to make a comparison, we could say that this file is like a combo between the MVC controller and its model. If you read the MVC part, you surely remember the logic behind the controller, where you create an array of users and return that model to the view. With a Razor Page, it’s not much different. Code Listing 5-23 using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.RazorPages; namespace Syncfusion.Asp.Net.Core.Succinctly.WebAppStartup.Pages { public class IndexModel: PageModel { public User[] Users {get;set;} public void OnGet() { Users = new[] { new User() {Id = 1, Firstname = "Ugo", Lastname = "Lattanzi", Twitter = "@imperugo"}, new User() {Id = 2, Firstname = "Simone", Lastname = "Chiaretta", Twitter = "@simonech"}, };; } } } Now go back a few pages and compare it to the code in Code Listing 5-6; you will notice a few changes. The code is inside an OnGet method, while with MVC it is implemented in the Index action method of the HomeController. Also, the Index method had the attribute [HttpGet] to indicate which action has to be executed for an HTTP GET verb. As you can imagine, with Razor Pages, the name of the method serves the same function as the attribute used with ASP.NET MVC. The OnGet method is executed for GET requests. If you have to handle POST, the method would be OnPost, and so on for all other verbs. So, the name of the method changes, as well as the way to pass the model to the view. In MVC you create a ViewModel object and return it with the View method, while with a Razor Page you just assign it to a property of the PageModel. The Razor markup is exactly the same because the only difference between the two frameworks is how the view is instantiated. Code Listing 5-24 @page @model Pages.IndexModel @{ Layout = null;
- 91. 91 } <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Hello World</title> </head> <body> <h1>Users</h1> <div> @foreach (var user in Model.Users) { <hr /> <p>Firstname: @user.Firstname</p> <p>Lastname: @user.Lastname</p> <p>Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@user.Twitter"> @user.Twitter</a></p> } </div> </body> </html> The routing is based on the physical location of the file inside the Pages folder, so it’s slightly different from how it works in ASP.NET MVC. Table 3: Sample Files and their URLs File name and path Matching URL /Pages/Index.cshtml / or /Index /Pages/Contact.cshtml /Contact /Pages/Products/Index.cshtml /Products or /Products/Index /Pages/Info/Contact.cshtml /Info/Contact We can summarize by saying that the folder Pages never appears in the URL, and the structure of the URL is made by the structure of folders and files created inside the Pages folder. This is only an introduction to Razor Pages, just like it was for ASP.NET MVC. If you want to go more in depth into the topic, you can do so with the official documentation.
- 92. 92 Single-page applications Single-page applications (SPAs) are a very hot topic, and it is now possible to create both Angular-based and React-based applications directly from within Visual Studio, and also from the dotnet CLI. With Visual Studio you have the option of choosing the template inside the New ASP.NET Core Web Application window as shown in Figure 5-21. Figure 5-21: New ASP.NET Core Web Application With the dotnet CLI, you can create an SPA by choosing one of the SPA templates: • angular • react • reactredux Whichever method of creation you choose, you get an application that uses the newly introduced feature called JavaScriptServices.
- 93. 93 JavaScriptServices JavaScriptServices is a set of features that helps use client-side technologies within ASP.NET Core applications. For example, it can be used, among other things, to run JavaScript on the server interoperating with Node.js, to automatically build client-side assets using Webpack, and to simplify the usage of various SPA frameworks (like Angular, React, and more). The Angular application template By choosing the Angular template you get a sample application with a few pages, one of which connects to a Web API. Figure 5-22 shows the structure of the application. Figure 5-22: SPA with Angular and ASP.NET Core
- 94. 94 The ClientApp folder contains the whole Angular application, created using the Angular CLI. This way, you can work on Angular as if you were using a normal client-only Angular application, even without using Visual Studio. And if you are used to building Angular applications using the CLI, you can still do it. The Controllers folder contains the controllers, like any other Web API application. The Pages folder contains the few server-side pages that might be needed, like, in the sample, the Error page. They are just Razor pages because such a simple page doesn’t require the full view pages structure to be created. With the structure set up like this, now you can start easily developing your SPA, as the ASP.NET part is just like any other ASP.NET Web API. SignalR Sitting next to SPAs, there is another class of applications, called “real-time applications,” where data is pushed from the server to the browser without any operation performed by the user. This kind of interaction is possible thanks to a feature of HTML5, implemented nowadays in all modern browsers, called a WebSocket, which allows a full duplex connection between server and client. ASP.NET Core has a framework that helps you build these kinds of applications in an easy and reliable way. This framework is called SignalR Core. Unfortunately, real-time applications are pretty complicated, and even a simple introduction would fill half of this book. However, you can find more information on SignalR in the official ASP.NET Core documentation. Conclusion ASP.NET Core comes with a rewritten MVC framework, improved from the previous version and aimed at being the unified programming model for any kind of web-based interaction. You’ve seen the cool new features introduced for simplifying the development of views. This is the last chapter that explains coding. The next two chapters are more about tooling, demonstrating how to deploy apps and how to develop on Mac without Visual Studio.
- 95. 95 Chapter 6 How to Deploy ASP.NET Core Apps You’ve built your application with simple ASP.NET Core, or by using ASP.NET Core MVC for more complex sites, and the time has come to show it to the world. A few years ago, we were mostly interested in deploying to internal servers, but with the rise of cloud computing, now it's just as likely that we deploy to Azure. Nevertheless, in this chapter we will discuss both experiences for local servers and for Azure. How to deploy on IIS ASP.NET Core, being based on OWIN, doesn't depend on the server, but it could in theory run on top of any server that supports it. Normally, during development, an ASP.NET Core application runs hosted by a local web server, called Kestrel, that is configured within the Program.cs file that starts the application. Basically, each ASP.NET Core application is self-contained and could run without external web servers. But while being optimized for performance and being super-fast, Kestrel misses all the management options of a full-fledged web server like IIS. Self-contained applications (and not just DLLs) require a different approach for hosting them inside IIS. Now, IIS is just a simple proxy that receives the requests from the client and forwards them to the ASP.NET Core application on Kestrel. It then sits and waits for processing to be completed, and finally, returns the response back to the originator of the request. In order to host ASP.NET Core applications in IIS, we need to install a specific module that does the "reverse proxy" work and makes sure the application is running. This module is called AspNetCoreModule, and can be installed from the ASP.NET Core server hosting bundle. If you want to try running ASP.NET Core via IIS on a development machine, there is nothing to do because the module is already installed as part of the SDK. If, on the other hand, you want to try it on a real server, the module has to be installed. Figure 6-1 shows the module listed inside the IIS manager application.
- 96. 96 Figure 6-1: IIS Modules With the module installed, the next step is creating a website. Since the module will just act as a proxy without running any .NET code, the website needs an application pool configured to run without any CLR, so the option No Managed Code must be selected, as shown in Figure 6-2. Figure 6-2: IIS Application Pool Basic Configuration The configuration of the AspNetCoreModule comes from the web.config file in the root of the folder.
- 97. 97 Code Listing 6-1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> <location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false"> <system.webServer> <handlers> <add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*" modules="AspNetCoreModuleV2" resourceType="Unspecified" /> </handlers> <aspNetCore processPath="dotnet" arguments=".PublishingSample.dll" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".logsstdout" hostingModel="inprocess" /> </system.webServer> </location> </configuration> Publishing the application is easy using the dotnet command-line tool. Just use the publish command to build and generate a self-contained folder that can be easily copied to the location where the website is. Normally, the published application is saved to the ./bin/[configuration]/[framework]/publish folder, but the target location can also be changed with a command-line option. Code Listing 6-2 dotnet publish --framework netcoreapp2.2 --output "c:tempPublishFolder" --configuration Release The publish operation also runs all the MSBuild targets and can, for example, run the bundling and minification of scripts and styles. It also automatically creates (or updates if one is specified) the web.config file with the right values for the project. Now, all that’s left is copying the folder to where the website is configured. The ASP.NET Core site is running on IIS. One thing that is missing in the dotnet publish command is the ability to publish to a remote server and perform incremental updates. An alternative publish method is the Publish dialog in Visual Studio. Typically, a system administrator will provide a publishing profile that can be imported into the Publish dialog. When publishing, the application will be built and then pushed to the remote server via Web Deploy.
- 98. 98 Azure Instead of deploying on premises, you could use the cloud. And when we talk about the cloud, we cannot forget to mention Microsoft Azure, which is absolutely one of the most important cloud computing platforms available right now. It offers tons of services, supporting almost all possible user needs. Whether our application needs to scale or not, Microsoft Azure could be a good solution to reduce the friction of server administration, configuration, hardware problems, backup, and so on. If you prefer to use another cloud hosting service, like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud, you can, but usually they offer virtual machines. Deploying there is similar to doing it on a remote IIS that you manage. Azure is different because it offers a service called App Service, which breaks down the barriers of configurations. Deploy to Azure from Visual Studio with Web Deploy Deploying to Azure from Visual Studio is really easy, even if you have to create new resources. From the Solution Explorer, right-click on the project name, and then select Publish. Figure 6-3: Publish Web Application Using Visual Studio
- 99. 99 Next, you can choose how to publish your application. You can choose from among various targets, both local and on Azure. When choosing Azure, you choose to create new resources or publish to some that have been created already. Figure 6-4: Select Publishing Targets If you choose Create New, in the next screen you can create an app service in which to host the web application. When running some tests, I recommend also creating a new resource group and a hosting plan, so that you don't interfere with any other apps you might already have on Azure. This way, once the test is complete, you can just delete the resource group, and everything will be deleted as well.
- 100. 100 Figure 6-5: Create App Service Now, click Create and wait for resources to be created on Azure. Once this is completed, you can publish to Azure.
- 101. 101 Figure 6-6: Publish to Azure At the end of the publishing procedure, Visual Studio will open the website with a browser, and if everything is fine, you should see your application running on Azure. Deploy to Azure via the command line Publishing from Visual Studio is fine if you are just doing some tests, or for a one-off project. But if you are working on a project where you'll deploy multiple times, you might want to deploy via an automated process. You could use the DevOps features of Azure, but you could also deploy directly from the command line by using the publish command. First, you have to create a publishing profile as you would when deploying from within Visual Studio. Then, from the command line, you can type the following line (where WebProject.csproj is the name of your project and Azure is the name of your publishing profile): dotnet publish WebProject.csproj /p:PublishProfile=Azure /p:Password=<passwordOmitted>
- 102. 102 Conclusion In this chapter, we discussed how easy it is to deploy ASP.NET Core applications on IIS on premises, and how it’s even easier to do it on Azure. No wonder everyone is now moving to the cloud. Now that you’ve built an application with Visual Studio and deployed it for the world to see, the next chapter goes more in depth on how to build apps without Visual Studio.
- 103. 103 Chapter 7 Tools Used to Develop ASP.NET Core Apps At the beginning of this book, we said that ASP.NET Core is a cross-platform framework, but apart from a simple example in Chapter 3, we've always used Visual Studio on Windows. This last chapter closes the gap between platforms by showing how ASP.NET Core applications can be developed without Visual Studio. Using dotnet CLI Throughout this book, you have used the dotnet command-line tool to create projects and to build and publish applications. In this chapter, you will go more in depth and see more advanced usages of the tool. The dotnet tool is called by first specifying the command, followed by the arguments specific to the command, and finally the options. Some of the commands available from the dotnet tool are: • new: Creates a new .NET Core project. • restore: Downloads all dependencies from NuGet (this is rarely needed, as the build command does it for you). • build: Compiles the projects. • publish: Generates a self-contained folder used for deployment. • run: Runs a project, building it if not already built. • pack: Packages the project as a NuGet package. • msbuild: Serves as a proxy to the standard MSBuild command. Let's start by looking in greater detail at the new command. When called without any option, it just lists all the possible types of projects it can create, but when an argument is specified, it directly creates a project. Using console, it creates a C# console application; with mvc, it makes a full-featured ASP.NET Core application with MVC; and with classlib, it creates a library project targeting .NET Standard 2.0. For both build and publish, you can specify the framework, the runtimes, and the configuration (debug or release) you want for compiling. These options are not very useful if you built your application only to target one framework or runtime. However, they are meaningful if, for example, you want to create a utility that can run on multiple machines as a native application. If you want to build a sample console app for Windows and for Mac, you have to first specify in the project file that you want to support additional runtimes.
- 104. 104 .NET Core supports a lot of different systems, but each of them has a very specific identifier, which is in the format [os].[version]-[arch] (e.g., osx.10.11-x64). But despite the templated look, they are unique strings, so before using a new RID, you have to make sure it's supported and has the right name. Refer to the RID Catalog on the Microsoft Docs site for more information. The runtimes and application support can be specified inside the RuntimeIdentifiers property of the project file as a list of RIDs separated by semicolons (;). Leave no space after the semicolon, or the restore will fail. Code Listing 7-1 <Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk"> <PropertyGroup> <OutputType>Exe</OutputType> <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.2</TargetFramework> <RuntimeIdentifiers>win10-x64;osx.10.12-x64;ubuntu.14.04- x64</RuntimeIdentifiers> </PropertyGroup> </Project> Once the file has been modified, we should run dotnet restore again. This will download all packages, also for other runtimes, as shown in the following command prompt window. Figure 7-1: Command Prompt Output You can now publish an app for all three runtimes, thus creating self-contained folders that contain native binary executables that can be copied directly to the target machine. To publish them, run the dotnet publish command three times, one per runtime you want to build. Code Listing 7-2 dotnet publish -r win10-x64 dotnet publish -r osx.10.12-x64 dotnet publish -r ubuntu.14.04-x64
- 105. 105 These commands create three folders under the bin folder of the project, one per runtime. Figure 7-2: Folder Output The dotnet CLI is extensible, so although it has very basic features now, it can be expanded with external libraries. You can expect its features to grow as time passes. Developing ASP.NET Core using Visual Studio Code With the CLI, you can create a new project first and compile and publish it later, but the CLI doesn't help you develop the application. If you don't want to use full-fledged Visual Studio 2017, you can use any modern text editor for which an OmniSharp plugin is available. OmniSharp OmniSharp is a set of open-source projects working together to bring .NET development to any text editor. It's made from a base layer that runs Roslyn and analyzes project files. This layer builds a model of the project that can be queried via APIs (REST over HTTP or via pipes) from text-editor extensions to display IntelliSense, autocomplete, suggestions, and code navigation. At the moment, there are OmniSharp extensions for six popular text editors: Atom, Sublime Text, Vim, Brackets, Emacs, and Visual Studio Code, the new cross-platform, open-source text editor developed by Microsoft. In this chapter, we are going to show how to develop a simple ASP.NET Core application using Visual Studio Code and the OmniSharp extension. Setting up Visual Studio Code Installing Visual Studio Code is easy: just download the version for your operating system here. It's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
- 106. 106 Visual Studio Code is a general-purpose editor that relies on extensions to support specific languages. To develop and debug ASP.NET Core applications, install the C# extension by clicking on the extension pane in Visual Studio Code and then typing @recommended in the search bar. Once the extension is installed, you can open an ASP.NET Core project created using the dotnet new mvc command by selecting its folder. Visual Studio Code understands that it's a .NET Core project, and will show a warning like the one in the following figure. Figure 7-3: VS Code Warnings The warning says that some configuration files are missing. Once you click Yes, two new files will be added to the .vscode folder: launch.json and tasks.json. These two files tell Visual Studio Code how to compile a .NET Core project and how to launch a debugging session. But don't worry too much about them, as all the correct values are added by the C# extension. Developing with Visual Studio Code Now that all is ready, developing an ASP.NET Core application with Visual Studio Code is just as productive as doing it with the full version of Visual Studio 2017, if not more. For example, you have IntelliSense and code completion. Figure 7-4: VS Code IntelliSense
- 107. 107 You also have the same linting and refactoring suggestions; they appear as squiggle underlines (red or green) with messages in the bottom panels and icons in the status bar. Figure 7-5 shows all the locations in the UI where suggestions appear. Figure 7-5: VS Code Suggestions Another example of a good Visual Studio Code feature is code navigation. Like any other editor, you can go to the definition of a variable and peek at it without leaving the current file. Figure 7-6: VS Code Navigation
- 108. 108 Debugging with Visual Studio Code Once the application has been developed, it's time to make sure it works. From within Visual Studio Code, you can launch the application, set breakpoints, and inspect variables. To do so, go to the Debug panel (by clicking the bug-shaped icon in the left sidebar), and click the Debug icon (the green Run icon, just like in Visual Studio) to launch the application. To set a breakpoint, click next to the line number in the editor. Then you can step through the instructions like with any other code debugger. The following figure shows the debugging interface of Visual Studio Code while debugging the HomeController. Figure 7-7: VS Code Debugging You can basically do everything you can normally do with the full version of Visual Studio, but in a lighter way, and on all operating systems. Conclusion In this chapter, you saw that you do not need a Windows machine with Visual Studio to develop ASP.NET Core applications. You can use a Mac and develop using the CLI and Visual Studio Code. In addition to what we've shown in this chapter, Visual Studio Code can do many more things. It is a Git client, a Node.js and client-side JavaScript editor and debugger, and it is also a very good Markdown editor. In fact, this whole book has been written in Markdown within Visual Studio Code, and later converted to Word format using Pandoc.
- 109. 109 A Look at the Future While the release of the first version of .NET Core was a bit troubled, with delays and changes of direction, version 2.2 is stable, implements the .NET Standard 2.0 (and therefore everything that was available in .NET 4.6.1), and is supported by great tooling in Visual Studio, the dotnet CLI, and Visual Studio Core. So, it is definitely something to be explored. I'd actually say that, unless you need something in particular that is not available for .NET Core yet, your new project should be started directly with .NET Core. What can we expect for the future of .NET Core? First, unlike previous frameworks, we have to expect a continuous release of enhanced tools, both for the CLI and for the tooling inside Visual Studio. Second, on the framework side, there will be the third big release of .NET Core 3.0, implementing .NET Standard 2.1, which will also include support for desktop applications. But rest assured that Microsoft sees .NET Core as the future of .NET for the next 10 years, so this is the right time to jump in and start learning this new technology.