.NET Core for platform independent web development

Several of our projects are based on the .NET platform. Until recently all of them used the classic .NET Framework. With a new project we had the opportunity to give .NET Core a try. The name stands for a moderized variant of the .NET Framework. It is developed by The .NET Foundation and Microsoft as a platform independent open-source project.

Not every type of project is currently suitable for .NET Core. If you want to develop a Windows desktop application (WinForms, WPF) you still have to use the classic .NET Framework. However, for server based applications .NET Core is a really good fit. Our application, for example, is implemented as a JSON API server with .NET Core and a React/Redux based client interface.

The Benefits

Since .NET Core is platform independent it runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows. We no longer need a Window machines to build the project from our CI server. Microsoft provides Docker images for building and running .NET Core projects.

ASP.NET Core applications are no longer bound to Microsoft’s IIS or IIS Express. You can also host them on Apache or Nginx servers as well.

With .NET Core you also have a vast choice of IDEs. Of course, you can use Visual Studio on Windows. But you also have the option to use JetBrains’ Rider (on any platform), Visual Studio for Mac or Visual Studio Code (Mac, Linux, Windows). If you don’t want to use an IDE for everything .NET Core also has a nice command-line interface. For example, the following command sets up a new ASP.NET Core project with React and Redux:

$ dotnet new reactedux

To compile an run the project:

$ dotnet run

The Entity Framework Core also has a feature I missed in the Entity Framework for the classic .NET Framework: a pure in-memory database provider, which is very useful for testing.

The Downsides

When you browse the NuGet packages list you have to be aware that not every package is compatible with .NET Core yet, but the list is growing. And, as mentioned above, you can’t develop desktop GUI applications with .NET Core.