ASP.NET 5 Project Structure

ASP.NET 5 Project Structure

1.Solution Items

1. The global.json file is used to configure the solution as a whole. It includes just two sections,Project and SDK by default.
   
2. Project : The projects property designates which folders contain source code for the solution. By default the project structure places source files in a src folder, allowing build artifacts to be placed in a sibling folder, making it easier to exclude such things from source control.
   
3. SDK: The sdk property specifies the version of the DNX (.Net Execution Environment) that Visual Studio will use when opening the solution.
   

2. Framework Target

ASP.NET 5 can target multiple frameworks, allowing the application to be deployed into different hosting environments. By default, applications will target the full version of .NET, but they can also target the .NET Core.

3.The project.json File

The project.json file is new to ASP.NET 5. It is used to define the project’s server side dependencies as well as other project-specific information. The top-level default sections included in project.json of the default web project template are highlighted below:

• userSecretsId property contains a value that acts as a unique ID for your web app.
• Version property specifies the current version of the project. You can also specify other metadata about the project such as authors and description.
• Dependencies section refer to an installed NuGet package or to another project. using wildcards to allow dependencies on a major version but automatically pull in minor version updates.
• Commands section allows you to configure commands that can be run from a command line(for instance, launch a web site or run tests).
• Exclude section is used to identify files and folders that should be excluded from builds..
• publishExclude is used to identify content portions of the project that should be excluded when publishing the site (for example, in production).
• Scripts section is used to specify when build automation scripts should run. Visual Studio now has built-in support for running such scripts before and after specified events.

4. The wwwroot Folder

In previous versions of ASP.NET, the root of the project was typically the root of the web app. If you placed a Default.aspx file in the project root of an early version of ASP.NET, it would load if a request was made to the web application’s root. In later versions of ASP.NET, support for routing was added, making it possible to decouple the locations of files from their corresponding URLs (thus, HomeController in the Controllers folder is able to serve requests made to the root of the site, using a default route implementation). However, this routing was used only for ASP.NET-specific application logic, not static files needed by the client to properly render the resulting page. Resources like images, script files, and stylesheets were generally still loaded based on their location within the file structure of the application, based off of the root of the project.

5. Client Side Dependency Management

The Dependencies folder contains two subfolders: Bower and NPM. These folders correspond to two package managers by the same names, and they’re used to pull in client-side dependencies and tools (e.g. Jquery, BootStrap or Gulp).

Expanding the folders reveals which dependencies are currently managed by each tool, and the current version being used by the project.

6. Server Side Dependency Management

The References folder, shown within Solution Explorer in Visual Studio, details the server-side references for the project.

7. Application Startup

ASP.NET 5 has decomposed its feature set into a variety of modules that can be individually added to a web app. This allows for lean web apps that do not import or bring in features they don’t use. When your ASP.NET app starts, the ASP.NET runtime calls Configure in the Startup class. If you create a new ASP.NET web project using the Empty template, you will find that the Startup.cs file has only a couple lines of code. The default Web project’s Startup class wires up configuration, MVC, EF, Identity services, logging, routes, and more. It provides a good example for how to configure the services used by your ASP.NET app. There are three parts to the sample startup class: a constructor, ConfigureServices, and Configure. The Configure method is called after ConfigureServices and is used to configure middleware.