dillorscroft/ApiBoilerPlate

A simple yet organized project template for building ASP.NET Core APIs in .NET Core 3.x

ApiBoilerPlate.AspNetCore

A simple yet organized project template for building ASP.NET Core APIs using .NET Core 3.x (the latest/fastest version of .NET Core to date). The goal is to help you get up to speed when setting up the core structure of your app and its dependencies. This enables you to focus on implementing business specific code requirements without you having to copy and paste the core structure of your project, and installing its dependencies all over again. This will speed up your development time when building new API project while enforcing standard project structure with its dependencies and configurations for all your apps.

If you are looking for a project template for ASP.NET Core API that you can reuse across your team, or if you are new to ASP.NET Core and would like to get up to speed on how it works without having you to configure most of the basic features that an API will have, then this is for you.

How to get it?

There are two ways to install the template:

• From Nuget with .NET CLI: ApiBoilerPlate.AspNetCore
• From VSIX Market Place with Visual Studio: ApiBoilerPlate.AspNetCore

Tools and Frameworks Used

• .NET Core 3.0
• ASP.NET Core - For building RESTful APIs
• Dapper - For data access.
• AutoMapper - For mapping entity models to DTOs.
• AutoWrapper - For handling request exceptions and consistent HTTP response format.
• AutoWrapper.Server - For unwrapping the Result attribute from AutoWrapper's ApiResponse output.
• Swashbuckle.AspNetCore - For secured API documentation.
• FluentValidation.AspNetCore - For Model validations
• Serilog.AspNetCore - For logging capabilities
• IdentityServer4.AccessTokenValidation - For JWT Authentication handling
• Microsoft.Extensions.Http.Polly - For handling HttpClient Resilience and Transient fault-handling
• AspNetCoreRateLimit - For controlling the rate of requests that clients can make to an external API based on IP address or client ID.
• AspNetCore.Diagnostics.HealthChecks - For performing health checks
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.Diagnostics.HealthChecks - For getting the results of Health Checks in the application
• AspNetCore.HealthChecks.UI - For Health Status visualization

Keep in mind that you can always replace and choose whatever framework you want to use for your API. After all, the template is just a skeleton for your project structure with default preconfigured middlewares. For example, you can always replace Dapper with Entity Framework Core, PetaPoco, etc. and configure them yourself. You can also replace Serilog with whatever logging frameworks and providers you want that works with ASP.NET Core - the choice is yours.

Install the Template from .NET CLI

1. Install the latest .NET Core SDK.
2. Run dotnet new -i apiboilerplate.aspnetcore. This will install the template in your machine.
3. Run dotnet new apiboilerplate --name "MyAPI" -o samples. This will generate the project template named MyAPI within the samples directory.

Once installed, you should see this output below:

The template "ASP.NET Core API Template for .NET Core 3.x" was created successfully.

Install the Template from the Visual Studio Marketplace

1. Fire up Visual Studio 2019, click Continue without code link.
2. On the Extensions menu, click Manage Extensions.
3. Click Online and then search for ApiBoilerPlate.
4. Click Download. The extension is then scheduled for install.

To complete the installation, close all instances of Visual Studio.

Alternatively, you can download and install the VSIX Extension directly at the following link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vmsdurano.ApiProjVSExt

Create a new Project from ApiBoilerPlate Extension

1. Open Visual Studio 2019 and then select Create New Project box
2. The newly installed template should appear at the top. You can also type "ApiBoilerPlate" in the search bar.
3. Click the ApiBoilerPlate item and then click Next.
4. Name your project to whatever you like and then click Create.
5. Visual Studio should generate the files for you.

Steps to run the template

STEP 1: Create a Test local Database:

1. Open Visual Studio 2019
2. Go to View > SQL Server Object Explorer
3. Drilldown to SQL Server > (localdb)\MSSQLLocalDB
4. Right-click "Database" Folder
5. Click "Add New Database"
6. Name it as "TestDB" and click OK
7. Right-click on the "TestDB" database and then select "New Query"
8. Run the script below to generate the "Person" table.

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Person]
(
	[Id] INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY IDENTITY(1,1), 
    	[FirstName] NVARCHAR(20) NOT NULL, 
    	[LastName] NVARCHAR(20) NOT NULL, 
    	[DateOfBirth] DATETIME NOT NULL
)

STEP 2: Update Database ConnectionString (Optional)

If you follow step 1, then you can skip this step and run the application right away.

If you have a different database and table name then you need to change the connectionString in appsettings.json that is pointing to the newly created database. You can get the connectionString values in the properties window of the "TestDB" database in Visual Studio.

Walkthrough

ApiBoilerPlate: A Project Template for Building ASP.NET Core APIs

Contributors

• Vincent Maverick Durano - Blog
• Bruno Renato Feliciano - Link

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details