Should I Transition to .NET Core? Will it hurt? An overview

About Your Speaker Mitchel Sellers Microsoft MVP & ASPInsider CEO @ IowaComputerGurus, Inc. Contact Information msellers@iowacomputergurus.com Twitter: @MitchelSellers Blog: http://www.mitchelsellers.com

Agenda Audience Overview? What is ASP.NET Core? What does ASP.NET Core get me? Limitations? Restrictions? How to Migrate? Decision Points? Main goal is to set the stage for what’s coming! I want to know a bit about you, I want to educate you on what core is, and then we can get to the root of the issue.

Quick Survey Current ASP.NET Web Forms Users? Current ASP.NET MVC Users? Current .NET Core Users? Get an overview of who we have in the room today!

What is ASP.NET MVC Core? Open-Source Cross Platform (Windows, Linux, Mac) Web Server Agnostic Re-write from ground up Modular In Nature vs. Old style Multiple NuGet Packages vs System.Web.dll Moves substantially faster than everything in the past Let’s discuss basics, then we can get into the nitty gritty Modular – Limits footprint for performance & overhead

ASP.NET Core History RC1 – November 18th, 2015 RC2 – May 16th, 2016 1.0.0 – June 27th, 2016 1.0.1 – September 13th, 2016 1.1.0 – November 16th, 2016 1.1.1 – March 7th, 2016 2.0.0 – August 17th, 2017 2.1.0 (Preview 1)

What does ASP.NET Core Get Me? A unified story for building web UI and web APIs Integration of modern client-side frameworks and development workflows A cloud-ready environment-based configuration system Built-in dependency injection New light-weight and modular HTTP request pipeline Ability to host on IIS or self-host in your own process Built on .NET Core, which supports true side-by-side app versioning Ships entirely as NuGet packages New tooling that simplifies modern web development Build and run cross-platform ASP.NET apps on Windows, Mac and Linux Open source and community focused (Taken from ASP.NET Core Documentation) Lets look at the “Microsoft Advertisements”

But really? What does it get ME?? Side-by-side deployment possibilities No longer concerned about “is the server patched” Better runtime experience In VS, when not attached to the debugger can get realtime changes Streamlined syntax requiring less work (TagHelpers) <a asp-controller=“Home” asp-action=“Index”>Home</a> Dependency Injection Logging Talking m

But I Migrate to What? Versions have created confusion Version 1.0 -> 1.1 is a migration Version 1.1 -> 2.0 is a migration Version 2.0 -> 2.1 appears easier Starting Points?

How to Migrate? No automatic process Documentation: https://docs.asp.net/en/latest/migration/index.html Basic minimums involve many manual migration steps Initial Steps Create a new Core Project to go alongside Perform mandatory changes along the way Ensure Developer Errors Enabled: app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();

View Changes Required Mandatory Optional @Script.Render => <script src=“”></script> @Styles.Render => <link href=“”/> Optional Change to using TagHelpers to get rid of @Html.ActionLink etc. Use of new <environment> tag for script differences <environment names="Development"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="~/css/backend.min.css"/> </environment> <environment names="Staging,Production"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="~/css/backend.min.css" asp-append-version="true"/> @Html.Raw(aiJavascriptSnippet.FullScript)

Client File, Bundling & Configuraton Static files must be moved to the new /wwwroot folder Bundling must be reconfigured to use the new “BundlerMinifier.Core” process I find this process much nicer Web.config is no longer used, application.json is now used Changes to use IOptions for dependency injection

Migration of Identity & EF Configuration moves to a new location Dependency Injection now used to validate things such as role membership etc Best Recommendation: Replace existing Login and associated views based on the new examples from a sample project

HttpHandlers & HttpModules Don’t exist anymore, replaced with “Middleware” More simple, but need to be re-implemented

Realistic Project Example – FlightFiles.com Existing ASP.NET MVC Project Started at MVC 3 using WebMatrix User accounts About 1,500 hours of development total 13 Controllers, 55 Views, 1 large data loader Migrated to ASP.NET Core 1.1 Transitioned to full .NET Core Transitioned to using Identity for authentication Total cost about 140 man-hours Result? Performance benchmarks improved by 61% across the app Specific data queries as much as 500 times faster Migration to Core 2.0 estimated at 4 hours Migrated to ASP.NET Core 2.0 Total cost of about 12 man-hours Performance improved again by about 15%

Decision Point? What now? Which flavor of .NET Core? New Projects Full Framework .NET Core New Projects Strongly recommend Full ASP.NET Core Existing Projects Decision time?

Quick Project Overview Questions?