asp-net-core

ASP.NET Core is a cross-platform, high-performance, open-source framework for building modern, cloud-enabled, Internet-connected apps. With ASP.NET Core, you can:

• Build web apps and services, Internet of Things (IoT) apps, and mobile backends.
• Use your favorite development tools on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• Deploy to the cloud or on-premises.
• Run on .NET Core.

Why choose ASP.NET Core?

Millions of developers use or have used ASP.NET 4.x to create web apps. ASP.NET Core is a redesign of ASP.NET 4.x, including architectural changes that result in a leaner, more modular framework.

ASP.NET Core provides the following benefits:

• A unified story for building web UI and web APIs.
• Architected for testability.
• Razor Pages makes coding page-focused scenarios easier and more productive.
• Blazor lets you use C# in the browser alongside JavaScript. Share server-side and client-side app logic all written with .NET.
• Ability to develop and run on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• Open-source and community-focused.
• Integration of modern, client-side frameworks and development workflows.
• Support for hosting Remote Procedure Call (RPC) services using gRPC.
• A cloud-ready, environment-based configuration system.
• Built-in dependency injection.
• A lightweight, high-performance, and modular HTTP request pipeline.
• Ability to host on the following:
  • Kestrel
  • IIS
  • HTTP.sys
  • Nginx
  • Apache
  • Docker
• Side-by-side versioning.
• Tooling that simplifies modern web development.

Build web APIs and web UI using ASP.NET Core MVC

ASP.NET Core MVC provides features to build web APIs and web apps:

• The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern helps make your web APIs and web apps testable.
• Razor Pages is a page-based programming model that makes building web UI easier and more productive.
• Razor markup provides a productive syntax for Razor Pages and MVC views.
• Tag Helpers enable server-side code to participate in creating and rendering HTML elements in Razor files.
• Built-in support for multiple data formats and content negotiation lets your web APIs reach a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices.
• Model binding automatically maps data from HTTP requests to action method parameters.
• Model validation automatically performs client-side and server-side validation.

Client-side development

ASP.NET Core integrates seamlessly with popular client-side frameworks and libraries, including Blazor, Angular, React, and Bootstrap. For more information, see Introduction to ASP.NET Core Blazor and related topics under Client-side development.

ASP.NET Core target frameworks

ASP.NET Core 3.x and later can only target .NET Core. Generally, ASP.NET Core is composed of .NET Standard libraries. Libraries written with .NET Standard 2.0 run on any .NET platform that implements .NET Standard 2.0.

There are several advantages to targeting .NET Core, and these advantages increase with each release. Some advantages of .NET Core over .NET Framework include:

• Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• Improved performance
• Side-by-side versioning
• New APIs
• Open source

Recommended learning path

We recommend the following sequence of tutorials for an introduction to developing ASP.NET Core apps:

1. Follow a tutorial for the app type you want to develop or maintain.

   TABLE 1

   App type	Scenario	Tutorial
   Web app	New server-side web UI development	Get started with Razor Pages
   Web app	Maintaining an MVC app	Get started with MVC
   Web app	Client-side web UI development	Get started with Blazor
   Web API	RESTful HTTP services	Create a web API†
   Remote Procedure Call app	Contract-first services using Protocol Buffers	Get started with a gRPC service
   Real-time app	Bidirectional communication between servers and connected clients	Get started with SignalR

2. Follow a tutorial that shows how to do basic data access.

   TABLE 2

   Scenario	Tutorial
   New development	Razor Pages with Entity Framework Core
   Maintaining an MVC app	MVC with Entity Framework Core

3. Read an overview of ASP.NET Core fundamentals that apply to all app types.
4. Browse the table of contents for other topics of interest.

†There’s also an interactive web API tutorial. No local installation of development tools is required. The code runs in an Azure Cloud Shell in your browser, and curl is used for testing.

Migrate from .NET Framework

For a reference guide to migrating ASP.NET 4.x apps to ASP.NET Core, see Migrate from ASP.NET to ASP.NET Core.

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