Getting Started

This tutorial explains how to create a new ASP.NET Core MVC (Razor Pages) web application using the startup template.

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. ¹

• .NET Core 3.1+

• Node v12 or v14

• Yarn v1.20+ (not v2) ² or npm v6+ (installed with Node)

• Redis (the startup solution uses the Redis as the distributed cache).

¹ You can use another editor instead of Visual Studio as long as it supports .NET Core and ASP.NET Core. ^↩

² Yarn v2 works differently and is not supported. ^↩

Install the ABP CLI

ABP CLI is a command line interface that is used to automate some common 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 MongoDB 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 -d mongodb --tiered 

• -d argument specifies the database provider, mongodb in this case.

• --tiered argument is used to create N-tiered solution where authentication server, UI and API layers are physically separated.

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. This document uses the application startup template to create a new web application. See the ABP Startup Templates document for other templates.

Alternatively, you can select the "Direct Download" tab from the ABP Framework web site to create a new solution.

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 the Domain Driven Design) and also contains unit & integration test projects.

Integration tests projects are properly configured to work with in-memory MongoDB database created per test (used Mongo2Go library).

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

Create the Database

Connection String

Check the connection string in the appsettings.json file under the .IdentityServer and .HttpApi.Host projects:

"ConnectionStrings": {
  "Default": "mongodb://localhost:27017/BookStore"
}

The solution is configured to use MongoDB in your local computer, so you need to have a MongoDB server instance up and running or change the connection string to another MongoDB server.

Seed Initial Data

The solution comes with a .DbMigrator console application which seeds 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.

Run the Application

Ensure that the .IdentityServer project is the startup project. Run the application which will open a 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.

You can login, but you cannot enter to the main application here. This is just the authentication server.

Ensure that the .HttpApi.Host project is the startup project and run the application which will open a Swagger UI in your browser.

This is the API application that is used by the web application.

Lastly, ensure that the .Web project is the startup project and run the application which will open a welcome page in your browser

Click to the login button which will redirect you to the Identity Server to login to the application:

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

If you want to include a React Native project in your solution, add -m react-native (or --mobile react-native) argument to project creation command. This is a basic React Native startup template to develop mobile applications integrated to your ABP based backends.

See the "Getting Started with the React Native" document to learn how to configure and run the React Native application.

Next

• Web Application Development Tutorial