Getting started

This tutorial explains how to create a new ASP.NET Core MVC web application using the startup template, configure and run it.

Setup your development environment

First things first! Let's setup your development environment before creating the first project.

Pre-requirements

The following tools should be installed on your development machine:

• Visual Studio 2019 (v16.4+) for Windows / Visual Studio for Mac.

• .NET Core 3.0+

• Node v12+

• Yarn v1.19+

You can use another editor instead of Visual Studio as long as it supports .NET Core and ASP.NET Core.

Install the ABP CLI

ABP CLI is a command line interface that is used to authenticate and automate some tasks for ABP based applications.

ABP CLI is a free & open source tool for the ABP framework.

First, you need to install the ABP CLI using the following command:

dotnet tool install -g Volo.Abp.Cli

If you've already installed, you can update it using the following command:

dotnet tool update -g Volo.Abp.Cli

Create a new project

This document assumes that you prefer to use MVC / Razor Pages as the UI framework and Entity Framework Core as the database provider. For other options, please change the preference on top of this document.

Using the ABP CLI to create a new project

Use the new command of the ABP CLI to create a new project:

abp new Acme.BookStore -t app

• -t argument specifies the startup template name. app is the startup template that contains the essential ABP Modules pre-installed and configured for you.

You can use different level of namespaces; e.g. BookStore, Acme.BookStore or Acme.Retail.BookStore.

ABP CLI commands & options

ABP CLI document covers all of the available commands and options for the ABP CLI. See the ABP Startup Templates document for other templates.

The solution structure

After creating your project, you will have the following solution folders & files:

You will see the following solution structure when you open the .sln file in the Visual Studio:

About the projects in your solution

Your solution may have slightly different structure based on your UI, database and other preferences.

The solution has a layered structure (based on Domain Driven Design) and also contains unit & integration test projects.

Integration tests projects are properly configured to work with EF Core & SQLite in-memory database.

See the application template document to understand the solution structure in details.

Create the database

Database connection string

Check the connection string in the appsettings.json file under the .Web project:

"ConnectionStrings": {
  "Default": "Server=localhost;Database=BookStore;Trusted_Connection=True"
}

The solution is configured to use Entity Framework Core with MS SQL Server. EF Core supports various database providers, so you can use any supported DBMS. See the Entity Framework integration document to learn how to switch to another DBMS.

Apply the migrations

The solution uses the Entity Framework Core Code First Migrations. So, you need to apply migrations to create the database. There are two ways of applying the database migrations.

Apply migrations using the DbMigrator

The solution comes with a .DbMigrator console application which applies migrations and also seed the initial data. It is useful on development as well as on production environment.

.DbMigrator project has its own appsettings.json. So, if you have changed the connection string above, you should also change this one.

Right click to the .DbMigrator project and select Set as StartUp Project

Hit F5 (or Ctrl+F5) to run the application. It will have an output like shown below:

Initial seed data creates the admin user in the database which is then used to login to the application. So, you need to use .DbMigrator at least once for a new database.

Using EF Core Update-Database command

Ef Core has Update-Database command which creates database if necessary and applies pending migrations.

Right click to the .Web project and select Set as StartUp project:

Open the Package Manager Console, select .EntityFrameworkCore.DbMigrations project as the Default Project and run the Update-Database command:

This will create a new database based on the configured connection string.

Using the .Migrator tool is the suggested way, because it also seeds the initial data to be able to properly run the web application.

Run the application

Ensure that the .Web project is the startup project. Run the application which will open the login page in your browser:

Use Ctrl+F5 in Visual Studio (instead of F5) to run the application without debugging. If you don't have a debug purpose, this will be faster.

Enter admin as the username and 1q2w3E* as the password to login to the application:

The application is up and running. You can start developing your application based on this startup template.

Mobile Development

ABP platform provide React Native template to develop mobile applications.

The solution includes the React Native application in the react-native folder as default. If you don't plan to develop a mobile application with React Native, you can ignore this step and delete the react-native folder.

The React Native application running on an Android emulator or a physical phone cannot connect to the backend on localhost. To fix this problem, it is necessary to run backend on the local IP.

• Open the appsettings.json in the .HttpApi.Host folder. Replace the localhost address on the SelfUrl and Authority properties with your local IP address.
• Open the launchSettings.json in the .HttpApi.Host/Properties folder. Replace the localhost address on the applicationUrl properties with your local IP address.

Run the backend as described in the Running the HTTP API Host (server-side) section.

React Native application does not trust the auto-generated .NET HTTPS certificate, you should use the HTTP during development.

Go to the react-native folder, open a command line terminal, type the yarn command (we suggest to the yarn package manager while npm install will also work in most cases):

yarn

• Open the Environment.js in the react-native folder and replace the localhost address on the apiUrl and issuer properties with your local IP address as shown below:

Make sure that issuer and apiUrl matches the running address of the .HttpApi.Host project.

Once all node modules are loaded, execute yarn start (or npm start) command:

yarn start

Wait Expo CLI to start. Expo CLI opens the management interface on the http://localhost:19002/ address.

In the above management interface, you can start the application with an Android emulator, an iOS simulator or a physical phone by the scan the QR code with the Expo Client.

See the Android Studio Emulator, iOS Simulator documents on expo.io.

Enter admin as the username and 1q2w3E* as the password to login to the application.

The application is up and running. You can continue to develop your application based on this startup template.

The application startup template includes the TenantManagement and Identity modules.

What's next?

Application development tutorial