In this tutorial, let us look at how to set up an ASP.NET Core development environment. To get started with ASP.NET Core development, You need an IDE and SDK Installed. First, we need to download and install dot net core SDK. We need an IDE, for which Visual Studio community edition is an ideal choice. You can also use Visual Studio Code if you are under Mac or Linux.
Table of Content
Setting Up Environment
There are several Pre Requisites you need to install before you build the web application using ASP.NET Core. To start with you need an IDE and Visual Studio 2017 / Visual Studio 2019 is the best available at the time. The Community Edition is free and you can use it to develop the ASP.NET Core applications. You also need to install the .NET Core SDK.
Installing Visual Studio
Visual Studio is the IDE of choice when it comes to developing Application in Windows OS.
You can either choose Visual Studio 2017 or the latest edition of Visual Studio 2019.
Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio 2019 Supports all Version of .NET Core including the latest version 3.0.
Click on the link How to download and install Visual Studio 2019 to install Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio 2017
When it comes to ASP.NET Core 2.0 web application, we need to use Visual Studio 2017 Update 15.3.4 or higher.
Click on the link How to download and install Visual Studio 2017 to install the Visual Studio.
You can download and install Visual Studio 2017 from the following Link https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/
You can use any edition of Visual Studio 2017. We will be using Visual Studio Community edition which is free for personal use. You can read the license terms from https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/compare/
While Installing Visual Studio Choose ASP.NET Web development Workload
Upgrading Visual Studio 2017
If Visual Studio is already installed, you may have to Upgrade to the Latest Update
You can check the current version of the Visual Studio from the menu option Help >> About Microsoft Visual Studio. in the IDE
To update the Visual Studio to latest version go to Tools -> Extensions and Updates Menu
Choose Updates and click on Update button to update Visual Studio to the latest version
Installing DOT NET Core SDK
We need DOT Net Core to develop ASP.NET Core applications. Dot Net Core is installed along with the Visual Studio. In case if it is not installed, then you can download it and install it from the following link how to download & Install dot net core
How to find out which dot net core version is installed on your PC
Open the folder C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk or C:\Program Files (x86)\dotnet\sdk. You should be able to see all the Dot net Core versions installed in your PC
You can check the version of the Dot net core runtime from the folder C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App
You can also find out the version installed from the command line using the command
1 2 3 | dotnet --version |
You can find out the location of Dotnet exe by using the command
1 2 3 | where dotnet |
Installing ASP.NET Core in Visual Studio 2015
Visual Studio 2015 works only if you are using .NET Core version <= 1.1. If you want to move to .NET Core 2.0, then you have no option but use Visual Studio 2017
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is another option for the IDE. This is the ideal option if you are on a Mac or Linux.
You need to install the following
.NET Core 2.0.0 SDK or later from https://www.microsoft.com/net/core
Visual Studio Code from https://code.visualstudio.com
VS Code C# extension from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.csharp
Summary
In this tutorial, we looked at how to install the prerequisites needed for developing Application with ASP.NET Core. In the next tutorial, we will look at the dotnet cli, the new command-line interface.