chapter seven
7 Introduction to .NET Aspire integrations
This chapter covers
- The fundamentals of .NET Aspire integrations
- The benefits of using .NET Aspire integrations over raw Docker containers
- Adding .NET Aspire integrations to a .NET Aspire app
- Setting up a Redis output cache as an .NET Aspire integration
- Adding a custom .NET Aspire integration
As well as being able to orchestrate .NET projects, executables, and Docker containers, .NET Aspire can also orchestrate the so-called .NET Aspire integrations (also known as .NET Aspire components). These components are special libraries that add popular packages to our distributed application, which include the following:
- Databases (e.g. SQL Server, PostgreSQL, etc.)
- Message brokers (e.g. Kafka, Service bus, etc.)
- Distributed cache (e.g. Redis)
The integrations are mostly based on Docker containers. However, the libraries that enable them have a whole range of extension methods that make it much easier to host such components in .NET Aspire compared to working with Docker containers directly.