Consuming Static Resources in ASP.NET Core 1.0

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As discussed in my previous article, static files are those files which are served directly to clients. It includes HTML, CSS, image and JavaScript files. In ASP.NET Core 1.0, default location of static files is wwwroot of project and location of this wwwroot is defined in project.json. So, all the static files which you want to serve to clients must be placed at wwwroot location.  

My article focuses on how to access and expose such static resources to client. Now let’s proceed step-by-step to create awareness on how to use static files.

Step 1 - Create an empty ASP.NET 5 project

Open Visual Studio 2015, select an empty project template for creating new ASP.NET application as:

 Step 2 – Introduce Static File

Create a HTML file under wwwroot folder. Below is my sample HTML file named SampleHTML:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3 - Configure Middleware

Middleware are small components that can be combined as part of application in order to handle HTTP request response pipeline. So in order to serve static files. Midddleware has to be configured by adding static files to the pipeline. And this can be achieved by using extension method named UseStaticFiles in Startup class. But before that, add the required dependency in project.json file as highlighted below:

 

 

Next is to update Configure method in Startup class as:

 

Step 4 - Build and run

Build your code. Now type address as http://<your app name>/SampleHTML.html, your page will be rendered as:

 

 

Hope you enjoyed playing with static files. Benefit of using static files in such a way is that you need not to put extra effort to save your sensitive static file because if your file is not available at wwwroot, it won’t be rendered to client. Enjoy learning !!!

Fixing ‘DNX design time process error in VS 2015’

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Today I thought to create my first demo using Visual Studio 2015 for ASP.NET Core 1.0. So, I opened VS2015 and chose Web Application template under ASP.NET 5 Templates. Visual Studio started creating a project for me. Although my project was created but at the same time some DNX error was thrown as shown below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I tried various options including restarting machine, re-installing Visual Studio, etc.

But Alas ! Nothing worked. But on surfing for few hours, I found a solution which worked for me.

You can run any of the below commands:

dnvm update-self OR dnvm upgrade

 

Open Visual Studio 2015 and do dnvm update using command line as:

 

 

Once this command was executed, I didn’t get that error again. Hope reading this blog will save your few minutes of troubleshooting. Enjoy learning.

Features of ASP.NET Core 1.0

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ASP.NET Core 1.0 is a new open-source framework for building modern Web applications. As compared to previous versions of ASP.NET there are many major changes happened. I’ll try to capture most of the changes in this blog post.

ASP.NET Core 1.0 was initially named as ASP.NET 5. I’m dedicating this blog post to showcase the major features of ASP.NET Core 1.0.

Single aligned web stack
ASP.NET Core 1.0 is a single aligned web stack on top of ASP.NET for Web API and Web UI as shown in below figure (image taken from mva):

 












Above figure clearly depicts that there is very less sharing between these three stacks. If you will see from ASP.NET template view, you will notice that all the three options are dimmed out as shown below:

Much leaner framework with reduced surface area
ASP.NET Core 1.0 is no longer based on System.Web.dll. As per dzone, typical HTTPContext object graph takes 30K in memory while new implementation takes around 2K.It means now you can take only those NuGet packages which are really required. It strictly follows pay-for-what-you-use model.

project.json file
A new JSON file named project.json is introduced which takes care of dependencies and versions. Below is the sample project.json file:

A very good thing is VS2015 provides the IntelliSense support for all the available NuGet packages and versions.

global.json file
This file is used to configure solution as a whole. By default, in includes below data:

Options for storing configuration settings
Unlike earlier ASP.NET verisons, Web.config is not the only place for storing the configuration settings. ASP.NET Core 1.0 allows you to read configuration values from range of sources like XML, JSON, environment variables. All the configuration sources can be set in a class file named Startup as shown below:

In cloud environment value of environment variables will automatically be used rather than local configuration values.

Client Side Dependency Management
Dependencies folder contains two subfolders corresponds to two package managers named Bower and npn. These folder tells which client side dependencies are managed by which tool.

Server Side Dependency Management
In ASP.NET Core 1.0, server side references are placed in References folder with corresponding target frameworks

More Options for Hosting
Cross platform support by .Net Core 1.0 opened up the new hosting options. Now user need not to rely only on IIS for web application hosting. This initiative was taken because IIS is not available on other platforms like Mac and Linux. On such platforms, ASP.NET applications can be self-hosted or kestrel web server can be used.

Inbuilt Dependency Injection Support
ASP.NET Core 1.0 includes a simple built-in inversion of control (IoC) container that supports constructor injection by default, but this can be replaced with any other container. Services are made available through dependency injection and can be setup in ConfigureServices method of StartUp class. I’ll emphasis more on this in my next blog.

Static files at wwwroot
Static files are those files which are served directly to clients. It includes HTML, image and JavaScript files. In ASP.NET Core 1.0, default location of static files is wwwroot of project and location of this wwwroot is defined in project.json. In other words, static files which are not located to wwwroot will not be accessible. Introducing this feature enhances the security capability of application and one need not to impose any exceptional guidelines to block access to delicate files.

Target Frameworks
In order to support cross platform development, applications built using ASP.NET Core 1.0 can target full .Net and .Net Core framework. It means you can run your application either on Windows or on Mac or Linux.

ASP.NET Core 1.0 features at a glance[reference – scott’s weblogs]:

• Build and run cross-platform ASP.NET apps on Windows, Mac and Linux  
• Built on .NET Core, which supports true side-by-side app versioning   
• New tooling that simplifies modern Web development 
• Single aligned web stack for Web UI and Web APIs   
• Cloud-ready environment-based configuration  
• Integrated support for creating and using NuGet packages  
• Built-in support for dependency injection        
• Ability to host on IIS or self-host in your own process    

                Basically this new ASP.NET(MVC + Web API + Web Pages = ASP.NET Core 1.0) is much more tuned for modern web development.

Introducing ASP.NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0

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In one of the recent announcements, Microsoft has changed the name of ASP.Net 5 and .Net Core 5. Official blog post says:

However, naming the new, completely written from scratch ASP.NET framework "ASP.NET 5" was a bad idea for a one major reason: 5 > 4.6 makes it seem like ASP.NET 5 is bigger, better, and replaces ASP.NET 4.6. Not so. So we're changing the name and picking a better version number.

• ASP.NET 5 is now ASP.NET Core 1.0.
• NET Core 5 is now .NET Core 1.0.
• Entity Framework 7 is now Entity Framework Core 1.0 or EF Core 1.0 colloquially.  

Issues with VS2015.1.exe

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Few days back I downloaded Update 1 of Visual Studio 2015 using VS2015 Extensions. It ran quickly but in the end it reported that .Net Framework 4.6.1 RC had not been installed. On restart and installation, it was successfully installed.

But when I tried to open and run my already created ASP.NET application, I landed up with another issue. Visual Studio 2015 was not able to launch IIS Express. This was not an end.

I noticed another strange thing. Although my installation was successful, Extension's dialog was still showing that Update 1 is available. Now I was left with only one option – uninstall and reinstall Visual Studio 2015.

So, I went to control panel and selected Visual Studio Enterprise. As soon as I clicked on that, a notification popped up:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I clicked on Update and noticed that check box provided for VS 2015 Update 1 was still unchecked in the newly opened window as shown below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once update is completed, all my things are in place.

If you don’t want to suffer like me then my recommendation is to do update directly from Control Panel, rather than doing it using VS2015.1.exe. Hope you enjoyed troubleshooting.