nevtum / dotnet-api-starter-2020

Reference project and guide for starting cloud ready applications in ASP.NET core

ASP.NET core API setup 2020

This is a reference project, reflecting my learnings in making cloud ready (dockerized) .NET core applications in 2020. Below are progressive steps to get from a traditional ASP.NET core project to something more observable and deployable to the cloud.

Initial steps

Make sure the dotnet cli is installed. Start an ASP.NET core web api project:

    $ dotnet new webapi -o <project-name>

Inside the project directory, initialize a git repo and add a .gitignore file:

    $ dotnet new gitignore

To run the application on your local environment, enter the following commands:

    $ dotnet restore
    $ dotnet run

By default, dotnet binds the API to the https port 5001.

Set up structured logging

To add json logging to your project, follow the instructions from Serilog's site. Their guide is quite comprehensive to customize your log middleware and log formatting as it suits your needs. For the impatient, the required changes are in Program.cs

Dockerizing the API

Add .dockerignore and Dockerfile files to the root folder. Version 3.1 of .NET core base image was used. Make sure the dll file specified in the Dockerfile matches the project name.

Make sure to have Docker installed. Run the following to build your Docker image:

    $ dotnet build -t <image-name> .

Run your built docker image:

    $ dotnet run -it --rm -p 8000:80 <image-name>

which binds the API to port 8000. Test by making a request to http://localhost:8000/WeatherForecast