Building ASP.NET 5 Applications with Visual Studio Code
Note: ASP.NET 5 and DNX (the .NET Execution Environment) on OS X and Linux are in an early Beta/Preview state. This guide will help you get started but we recommend following the aspnet Home project on GitHub for the latest information.
ASP.NET 5 and DNX
ASP.NET 5/DNX is a lean .NET stack for building modern cloud and web apps that run on OS X, Linux, and Windows. It has been built from the ground up to provide an optimized development framework for apps that are either deployed to the cloud or run on-premises. It consists of modular components with minimal overhead, so you retain flexibility while constructing your solutions.
Installing ASP.NET 5 and DNX
Installation for each platform is slightly different, please refer to the following setup instructions based on on your operating system.
Getting Started
If you don't have an existingd ASP.NET DNX application we recommend using yeoman to scaffold a new one. Presuming you have Node.js installed, simply npm install yeoman and a few supporting tools such as the asp.net generator, grunt, and bower. This can be done in one command:
npm install -g yo grunt-cli generator-aspnet bower
Scaffolding your first Application
From the terminal, run yo aspnet to start the generator. Follow the prompts and pick the Web Application
Follow the instructions provided by the generator, go to the the WebApplication folder and run dnu restore to install of the necessary NuGet packages to run the application.
cd WebApplication
dnu restore
The ASP.NET 5 docs do a great job describing how to build next generation Cloud and Web applications so we won't do that here. Instead, we will focus on what Visual Studio Code can do.
Projects and Project Selection
VSCode is file and folder based as compared to Visual Studio, which is project or solution based. You don't open a solution in VSCode, you simply open a folder and if a supported project exists we will load it.
Open the WebApplication folder. If you set up a shortcut as described in setup, you can simply run code . from the terminal.
The ASP.NET 5/DNX project system is also file and folder based, so when VSCode sees the project.json it will load it. If you have multiple project.json files you can pick which one you want to use, looks down in the status bar.
Notice the project indication on the lower left corner. When the icon is flashing OmniSharp (the brain behind VSCode’s C# support) is starting, loading your project. If you see a red icon, it means something went wrong, you can find out by looking at the OmniSharp Output Log (‘kb(omnisharp.show.generalLog)’).
When the status bar shows the project information it’s a good time to get going. You can now leverage the full power of VSCode, author code and run your app.
Startup.cs is the startup file for your newly scaffoled application. Find the Startup method and let's start writing code. As soon as you access the framework (or any class in your application) you will get a rich IntelliSense experience, including parameter tool tips and the ability to cycle through overloads.
Commands with Ease
The project.json file allows you to define commands for your projects. Those commands are understood by Visual Studio Code and they will show up in the command palette.
In our application there are 4 commands defined:
To execute these commands you could run them from the terminal, but a faster way is to open the command palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)) in VSCode, start typing the name of the command you want to run, and hit Enter.
In this walkthrough we want to run the website, so the command we want to run is dnx: kestrel. VSCode understands the configured DNX runtime and will open a console window, and execute the command in there.
Open you favorite browser and browse to http://localhost:5001 to browse the site we created.
Note: command execution from the Command Palette doesn’t work yet on Linux. To run commands manually on Linux, start a console and type: dnx . <command_name>.
Debugging
Visual Studio Code and ASP.NET 5 are in preview and at this time debugging is not supported on OS X and Linux. Rest assured, we are working hard to bring these experiences to you in the near future.
Next Steps
We hope this gets you started building ASP.NET 5 applications. Try these things next:
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