Beyond the Basics: Advanced Web Apps with .NET 8

We’ve all seen the “hello world” demos: models, views, controllers, a DbContext, maybe some minimal API endpoints. In this workshop, we’ll go beyond the basics and explore the full potential of C# 12, ASP .NET Core 8, EF Core, and the rich ecosystem of libraries and packages that’s available for building web apps with .NET in 2024.

The workshop is based around “Rockaway”, a .NET web app for selling concert tickets. Our favourite developer-themed rock bands, from Dev Leppard to Mott the Tuple, are going on tour around the world, and we're going to build the platform that'll sell tickets to all their shows. Along the way we’ll encounter dozens of real-world scenarios, from data modelling, to timezones and currencies, to responsive layouts and email delivery. We’ll use asynchronous patterns and channels to build lightning-fast web apps which stay responsive even under heavy load. We’ll look at how to extend the built-in Bootstrap libraries with Blazor and Razor Components to create beautiful, responsive frontend layouts that work seamlessly with ASP.NET, and we’ll see how to test our applications at every level, from low-level isolation testing, to end-to-end integration tests which exercise the entire HTTP pipeline.

What You’ll Learn:

• Principles of web application architecture: areas, services, components and dependencies
• Testing ASP.NET Applications: WebApplicationFactory, Shouldly, AngleSharp
• Deploying web apps using Azure and GitHub Actions
• Observability with OpenTelemetry and .NET Aspire
• Interactive frontends with Blazor and Razor Components
• Advanced EF Core: mapping conventions and custom types
• Testing database code using EF Core and Sqlite
• Customising Bootstrap using SASS
• Globalisation: dates, times and currencies
• Async processing with threads and channels

This is a hands-on, interactive workshop: we’ll be sharing code throughout using GitHub and VS LiveShare, you’ll go home with a fully working copy of the sample application, and all the workshop code is published under the MIT license so you can use it for whatever you like. Application code is all built on .NET 8 using C# 12, so we can use new C# language features like primary constructors and collection expressions. You’ll also get to learn about many of my favourite developer tools like zoxide, oh-my-posh, MailTrap, Papercut, Postman, and ngrok: they’re not specific to .NET, but they do make building and testing .NET applications a lot easier.

Testimonials
What people have said about Dylan Beattie’s .NET workshops:

• “Everything was great, content, presentation, examples, answers to questions. All clear and understandable.”
• “I liked the way the lecturer kept the tempo and captured attention. Everything was well prepared and worked right away or almost right away.”
• “I really enjoyed the humour and that Dylan showed personality throughout the workshop.”
• “Really great organization and preparation. It shows that you have experience with this kind of workshops.”

Target Audience
This workshop is for developers who already have some experience with ASP.NET Core; you should already be familiar with the model/view/controller patterns, the Razor view engine, and basic data access using Entity Framework.

Computer Setup
Attendees will need a laptop running the .NET 8 SDK, and a code editor such as Visual Studio 2022, JetBrains Rider, or VS Code.