Getting Started

This tutorial assumes that you've already purchased an ABP Commercial license and have an active ABP Commercial account.

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. *

• .NET Core 3.0+

• Node v12+

• Yarn v1.19+

• Redis: The applications use Redis as as distributed cache. So, you need to have Redis installed & running.

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 automate some common tasks for ABP based applications.

ABP CLI is a free & open source tool for the ABP framework. It is also used for ABP Commercial application development.

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

Login to your account

In order to use ABP Commercial features, you need to login your account using the ABP CLI:

abp login <username>

It will ask a password, so you must enter the password of your account.

You can freely create a new account from the ABP Account web site. However, your account should be registered to an organization as a developer to be able to use the ABP Commercial. If your company has an ABP Commercial license, ask your manager to add your account to the developer list of the organization.

Install the ABP Suite

ABP Suite is an application aims to assist you on your development.

First, you need to install the ABP Suite:

abp suite install

If you've already installed, you can update it:

abp suite update

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.

There are two ways of creating a new project: ABP Suite and ABP CLI.

Using the ABP Suite to create a new project

Run the ABP Suite with the following command:

abp suite

This command starts the ABP Suite and opens in your default browser:

Click to the Create solution button and fill the modal form:

Select the UI framework, Database provider and other option based on your requirements then click to the OK button.

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

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-pro --tiered 

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

• --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. The main difference for the ABP Commercial is the template names. See the ABP Commercial Startup Templates document for other commercial 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 solution structure 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 .IdentityServer and .HttpApi.Host projects:

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

If you just use the Update-Database command, you will have an empty database, so you can not login to the application since there is no initial admin user in the database. You can use the Update-Database command in development time when you don't need to seed the database. However, using the .DbMigrator application is easier and you can always use it to migrate the schema and seed the 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

When you create a new application, the solution includes react-native folder by default. This is a basic React Native startup template to develop mobile applications integrated to your ABP based backends.

If you don't plan to develop a mobile application with React Native, you can safely delete the react-native folder.

You can specifying the -m none option to the ABP CLI to not create the react-native folder in the beginning.

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