Introduction to.Net Core

Author: Ritesh Mehta

The IT world is on constant change, thus Microsoft have made some huge alterations to the.Net framework and have specifically rolled out.Net Core, which partially is available to the open source community.

REDESIGN OF ASP.NET

.Net Core is a considerable redesign of ASP.NET. It’s a new open source and cross-platform framework to build cloud based, modern internet connected apps, such as web applications, IoT apps as well as mobile back-ends..Net Core applications could run or run on-premises. It consists of modular components that have minimal overhead costs, thus one retains flexibility while crafting solutions..Net core applications could be developed and run on Mac, Linux and Windows.

It is a subset of.Net, which is important to keep in mind. Although.Net Core is feature complete and has Base Class Library, a lot of components found in.Net are not included in it. It is thoroughly modularized. Every component is distributed through NuGet, which means that one could include the necessary modules only for an app to run and avoid overhead of the whole framework.

The first release of ASP.NET came nearly fifteen years ago as part of the.NET framework. Since then, there are already millions of developers who used it to create and run great web applications. Over the years, a lot of capabilities to it have evolved and added.

.Net Core has several architectural changes which result in a much modular and leaner framework. It is not based on System.Web.dll anymore, but it set of a set of granular and well-factored NuGet packages. This enables a developer to optimize an application to only include NuGet packages that are needed. The benefits of a smaller application surface area include lowered servicing, tighter security, enhanced performance and decreased expenses in a pay-for-what-you-use model.

FOUNDATIONAL IMPROVEMENTS WITH.NET CORE

  1. Unified story for making web APIs and UI.
  2. Cloud-ready environment-based configuration system.
  3. Modern client-side frameworks and development workflows integration.
  4. New modular and light-weight HTTP request pipeline.
  5. Built-in dependency injection.
  6. Built on.Net Core that supports real side-by-side application versioning.
  7. Ability for hosting on self-h9ose or IIS in one’s own process.
  8. Entirely ships as NuGet packages.
  9. Build and run cross-platform ASP.NET apps on Mac, Windows and Linux.
  10. Open source and community-centered.
  11. New tooling which simplifies web development.

.NET CORE PORTABILITY

A main focus point of.Net Core is being able to deploy it to as many kinds of devices possible, despite the spec level, size and operating system. When building and deploying an application included in the libraries that one need and the target device does not have to run the framework, much less a specific version. A deployment package would include everything that is needed to run and one is in charge of its updates. This is cooler when one realizes that updates to.Net will not break up an application. Furthermore, the update to integrate any new features in the framework could be made as an app update push when ready..Net Core is portable both in terms of processor architectures and operating systems. The code written for it is portable as well across app stacks, like Mono, which make it feasible to move apps across application stacks too.

.NET CORE BENEFITS AND DIFFERENCES

What is truly special about.Net Core is that it is shipped by NuGet, which means one could ship a private.Net Core framework version for a certain app. This way, other app versions could not change the behavior of an app, which is very cool. With it being accessible to Linux and Mac, for developers this means they could now build cloud-based and web apps that could run on any system, which is another neat and cool feature.

Moreover, the open-source apps that Microsoft have made available could be built using the Visual Studio Community edition which is free. This is not only a rehash of the former ‘Express’ edition, but a full blown development environment. Basically, a developer gets Visual Studio Pro, which is really cool. The development environment and ASP.NET 5 supports gulp, grunt bower and NPM for front end programmers. Now, developers have the scaffolding for a huge range of readily available builds, which all in all is a very nice development.

.NET CORE RUNTIME

.Net Core Runtime has been released to the open-source community who collaborates with the.Net team to boost and extend the platform. With a MIT open source license, now the code provides developers with an open source, fully supported cross platform.Net stack for building server and cloud apps..Net Core is a small optimized runtime, which is the basis of ASP.NET Core 5.

.Net Core is released to the open-source community to enhance and extend the.Net platform. It provides developers with a fully supported and open source cross platform.