📓 Configuration Quick Reference

Use this lesson as a quick reference for setting up project files, folders, and configuring a host for an ASP.NET Core MVC web application.

Sample File/Folder Structure

ProjectName.Solution/
├── .gitignore
├── ProjectName/
│   ├── Controllers
│   │   └── NameController.cs
│   ├── Models
│   │   └── ClassName.cs
│   ├── Program.cs
│   ├── Properties
│   │   └── launchSettings.json
│   ├── ProjectName.csproj
│   └── Views
│       └── ControllerName
│           └── RouteMethodName.cshtml
└── ProjectName.Tests/
    ├── ModelTests
    │   └── ClassNameTests.cs
    └── ProjectName.Tests.csproj

Sample ProjectName.csproj File

ProjectName.Solution/ProjectName/ProjectName.csproj

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

</Project>

The .gitignore in our .NET projects should include the following:

ProjectName.Solution/.gitignore

obj
bin

Sample Program.cs File

ProjectName.Solution/ProjectName/Program.cs

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;

namespace ProjectName
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      WebApplicationBuilder builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

      builder.Services.AddControllersWithViews();

      WebApplication app = builder.Build();

      // app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
      app.UseHttpsRedirection();

      app.UseRouting();

      app.MapControllerRoute(
        name: "default",
        pattern: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}"
      );

      app.Run();
    }
  }
}

launchSettings.json and Starting a Server in Development Mode with a Watcher

ProjectName.Solution/ProjectName/Properties/launchSettings.json

{
  "profiles": {
    "development": {
      "commandName": "Project",
      "dotnetRunMessages": true,
      "launchBrowser": true,
      "applicationUrl": "https://localhost:5001;http://localhost:5000",
      "environmentVariables": {
        "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
      }
    },
    "production": {
      "commandName": "Project",
      "dotnetRunMessages": true,
      "launchBrowser": true,
      "applicationUrl": "https://localhost:5001;http://localhost:5000",
      "environmentVariables": {
        "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Production"
      }
    }
  }
}

With the above Properties/launchSettings.json file in place, we can run the following:

$ dotnet watch run

And our project will automatically be run with the configurations that we've set in the first profile "development", which will run our project in development mode. Note that the default launch profile that is used when we run dotnet watch run is always the first profile listed in the launchSettings.json file.

If we want to run our project in production mode with a watcher, we can use a command line flag to specify that we want to run the "production" profile.

$ dotnet watch run --launch-profile "production"