ASP.Net REST API Service Template

The repository contains a ready to use preconfigured project template for MS Visual Studio 2017, 2019 and 2022 to create fully functional production-ready cross-platform RESTful services based on .Net 5.0/6.0.

Note 1. The current version does not support .Net Core 3.1. If you want to use it you can use the previous version 2.6.

Note 2. ASP.NET Core 3.0 has many breaking changes against version 2.2. If you want to use v2.2 or earlier, please, check out one of the previous releases, starting from version 1.3 or earlier.

Note 3. If you are looking for classic ASP.Net services with WebAPI2 and other stuff like that, please, check out a project ASP.Net WebApi2 Application with OWIN.

This template is intended to provide you an almost all that you need for creating RESTful services. The project doesn't contain any UI stuff, like React or Angular libraries, npm, Razor views, as well as any problem domain specific things like EnityFramework, some "right" or "neat" project structure or even a number of projects, each for the specific purpose (for example, service itself, domain logic, data access, testing and so on) as it does some other templates. There are too many areas where ASP.Net Core services can be used, so it can hardly be offered anything related to domain areas to fit all of these project types.

However, some things must be implemented or configured in almost each of the projects, regardless of the subject area. Among these things are dependency injection, exception handling, logging, and others. There are many libraries and solutions to address each of them, but it is impossible to choose a set that fits absolutely everyone. In this project, I have collected the solutions that I consider the most convenient and use them for years in almost each of my projects. I hope you like them too :). So, the project contains these the most important features, but is not limited to them:

• CORS and preflight requests support
• Autofac as a DI-container
• AutoMapper
• Serilog as a default preconfigured logger
• Unhandled exceptions handling
• Swagger for API documentation
• Ability to use environment variables in configuration options and support for '.env' files to easy switching between different environments (thanks to DotNetEnv)
• ... and some boilerplate code

Let me know, what do you think. Any suggestions and bug reports are very appreciated.

Getting Started

Using Visual Studio

1. Install the extension from Visual Studio Marketplace or download and install the latest version from GitHub. Also, you can install it from Visual Studio. To do so click on "Tools/Extensions and Updates..." menu item, then select "Online/Visual Studio Marketplace/Templates" on the left pane, search for "ASP.Net Core RESTful Service Template," select it and click "Download" button. Please note! The latest version of the template is targeted to the .Net 6.0. If you need a template for the 3.1 or 2.x version use one of the previous versions of the template.
2. Restart Visual Studio
3. Click on "File/New Project..." menu item
4. Select "APS.Net REST API Service" and click OK button.
5. Select either "IIS Express" or "RestApi.Sevice1" mode and run a service
6. Open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:5000/swagger to see an API documentation
7. Play around with the API. Try to add a new product or update one

Using command line

1. Install the template:

dotnet new -i DrWatson1.ProjectTemplate.RestAPI

2. Create a project:

dotnet new rest-api -n RestApiService

It creates a new project "ASPNetCoreService" in the corresponding subfolder. Replace the "ASPNetCoreService" with a desired name.

3. Run the project:

cd RestApiService
dotnet run

4. Open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:5000/swagger to see an API documentation
5. Play around with the API. Try to add a new product or update one

Visit project Wiki pages to learn more about the template.

Have fun and happy hacking!

Release Notes