1 Getting Started with .NET Aspire

 

This chapter covers

  • Overview of .NET Aspire
  • Distributed applications and the challenges they face
  • The concept of an orchestrator inside distributed applications
  • The structure of the Aspire Host project
  • Using service discovery in Aspire

In November 2023, the .NET community was taken by surprise. This is when .NET 8 was released along with C# 12. While these updates were completely expected, a thing that got released alongside them was completely unexpected. This thing was .NET Aspire. There were no announcements of it before its initial release. It was developed in total secrecy. However, once it was released, it had a huge impact on the .NET development community. Every .NET influencer and blogger started talking about it, and many businesses started adopting it.

The reason behind such a huge success was that Aspire provided an elegant solution to a problem that plagued software engineers for many years. It provided an easy way to develop and debug distributed applications locally.

1.1 Introduction to distributed systems

1.1.1 Advantages of using distributed systems

1.1.2 Disadvantages of using distributed systems

1.2 Overview of orchestration

1.2.1 Key aspects of orchestration

1.3 How .NET Aspire changes the game

1.4 Getting started with the Aspire Starter Project

1.5 Orchestrating with .NET Aspire

1.6 Setting Up .NET Aspire Orchestrator

1.6.1 Installing .NET Aspire dependencies

1.6.2 Host application startup

1.6.3 Registering the UI application

1.7 Introducing Service Defaults

1.7.1 Adding extension methods

1.7.2 Using the extension methods

1.8 Service discovery in .NET Aspire

1.8.1 Registering service discovery components

1.8.2 Enabling service discovery

1.8.3 Using service discovery

1.9 Summary