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.NET Core

Textbook - ASP.NET Core in Action 3rd Edition

History of .NET Notes

What can I build with .NET Core?​

Example ASP.NET Architecture

Paradigms build on top of ASP.NET Core.

  • Minimal APIs—Simple HTTP APIs that can be consumed by mobile applications or browser-based single-page applications.
  • Web APIs—An alternative approach to building HTTP APIs that adds more structure and features than minimal APIs.
    • .NET WebAPI with React is used for providing a REST API for a client-side Single Page Application (SPA)
    • Is WebAPI and OpenAPI compatible? Yes. WebAPI can be setup with Swagger (OpenAPI) documentation
  • gRPC APIs—Used to build efficient binary APIs for server-to-server communication using the gRPC protocol.
    • RPC framework: Execute procedures on a remote computer through requests
  • Razor Pages—Used to build page-based server-rendered applications.
    • Use the pages paradigm when your content is structured around action pages --> Like "Contact", "About Us", or "Login"
  • MVC controllers—Similar to Razor Pages. Model-View-Controller (MVC) controller applications are for server-based applications but without the page-based paradigm.
  • Blazor WebAssembly—A browser-based single-page application framework that uses the WebAssembly standard, similar to JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React, and Vue.
  • Blazor Server—Used to build stateful applications, rendered on the server, that send UI events and page updates over WebSockets to provide the feel of a client-side single-page application but with the ease of development of a server-rendered application
    • Downside is that it requires maintaining an internet connection to keep the websocket open

Multiple paradigms can be combined within a single application

What do I want to know about ASP.NET Core?​

  • I want to know more about the MVC paradigm
    • I need to improve my understanding of the traditional MVC paradigm
      • View Engine: By default supports Razor and ASPX (Web Forms)
      • Model --> Entity framework
      • Controller --> Typical register routes stuff
      • Why was MVC invented? Why was WebAPI invented?
    • Blazor / Razor templating is equivalent to Django / Jinja2 templating?
      • What's the difference between razor paradigm and mvc?
  • I want to understand the tradeoffs between WebAPI, MVC, Razor & Blazor
    • I want to scope my requirements and pick the correct technology BASED on those requirements
  • Architecture design: abstracting the application and domain logic so it can be used elsewhere

.NET Technology Overview​

  • Kestrel: Default websever bundled with .NET
    • Improved performance from ASP.NET windows IIS webservers
  • Nginx: Reverse proxy I'm familiar with
    • Use reverse proxy with webservers because they can handle health checks, load balancing, retries and failover. Separatation of converns with Kestrel only concerned with generating HTTP responses
  • NuGet: Package manager for .NET
    • Equivalent to npm (js), maven (java), etc.

Versioning of .NET​

  • I'm using .NET 6.0 I've chosen .NET 7.0
  • Features in .NET 7.0 that make me consider migrating
    • Output caching middleware (no redis!)
    • Rate limiting middleware
    • JSON support in EF Core 7.0
  • .Net Framework
    • ASP.NET Web Forms --> Tied to old System.Web.dll and IIS, so not available on ASP.NET Core
      • Can reploace with blazor server which is similar to web forms application model
      • Or slowly introduce WebAPI concepts to Web Forms and transition that way
    • Windows Communication Foundation (WCF): Only partially supported in ASP.NET Core
      • gRPC does WCF's contract-based RPC style without WCF itself
    • ASP.NET MVC has similar features to ASP.NET Core but different underlying architecture
      • No direct replacement for some features