/react-aspnet-boilerplate

A starting point for building React applications with ASP.NET Core 1, leveraging existing techniques.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

react-aspnet-boilerplate

A starting point for building universal/isomorphic React applications with ASP.NET Core 1, leveraging existing front-end approaches. Uses the JavaScriptViewEngine.

Goals

  1. Minimize .NET's usage - It's only usage should be for building REST endpoints (WebApi) and providing the initial state (pure POCO). No razor syntax anywhere.
  2. Isomorphic/universal rendering
  3. Client and server should render using the same source files (javascript)
  4. Out-of-the-box login/register/manage functionality - Use the branch empty-template if you wish to have a vanilla React application.

This approach is great for front-end developers because it gives them complete control to build their app as they like. No .NET crutches (bundling/razor). No opinions. No gotchas. Just another typical React client-side application, but with the initial state provided by ASP.NET for each URL.

Getting started

To checkout this demo...

> cd src/React
> npm install
> gulp
> dotnet restore
/* the following line is only for the master branch, which has a database backend (user management) */
> dotnet ef database update
> dotnet run

Some of the branches in this repo that are maintained:

  • master - This is the main branch. It has all the stuff required to get you started, including membership, external logins (OAuth) and account management.
  • empty-template - This branch for people that want an empty template with the absolute minimum recommend boilerplate for any ASP.NET React application.

There isn't really a "New Project" template for this. For now, download this repository and use it as your starting point. Then change your .sln and project names as you like.

The interesting parts

  • client.js and server.js - The entry point for the client-side/server-side applications.
  • Html.js and App.js - These files essentially represent the "React" version of MVC Razor's "_Layout.cshtml".
  • Controllers - The endpoints for a each initial GET request, and each client-side network request.

What is next?

I will be adding features to this project as time goes on to help me get started with new React projects in .NET. So, expect some more things. I am also open to contributions or recommendations.

I took a lot of things from react-redux-universal-hot-example, but not everything. As time goes on, expect to see more of the same patterns/technologies/techniques copied over.