.NET and ASP.NET Core 10 Cheatsheet

Setup and info

• Check the SDK version — Print the version of the .NET SDK in use.
• List installed SDKs — Show every installed SDK version.
• Show full environment info — Print SDKs, runtimes and OS details. Useful for bug reports.
• List project templates — Show the templates you can create projects from.
• Trust the HTTPS development certificate — Create and trust a local certificate so https://localhost works without warnings.

Projects and solutions

• Create a web API — Create an ASP.NET Core web API project.
• Create a console app — Create a console application.
• Create a solution — Create a solution file to group projects.
• Add a project to a solution — Include a project in the solution.
• Add a .gitignore — Create a .gitignore suited to .NET projects.
• Add a NuGet package — Add a package reference to the project.
• Reference another project — Add a project-to-project reference.
• Find outdated packages — List packages that have newer versions.

Build, run and test

• Restore dependencies — Download the NuGet packages a project needs.
• Build the project — Compile the project or solution.
• Run the project — Build the project if needed and run it.
• Run with hot reload — Rebuild and restart when source files change.
• Run the tests — Run the tests in a project or solution.
• Run matching tests — Run only tests whose fully qualified name contains the text.
• Format the code — Apply code style rules to the project.
• Clean build output — Delete the bin and obj outputs of a build.

Publishing

• Publish for release — Build in Release mode and write the deployable files to a folder.
• Publish a self-contained app — Include the runtime, so the target machine needs no .NET install.
• Publish as a container image — Build a container image directly from the project, without a Dockerfile.

Entity Framework Core

• Install the EF tool — Install the dotnet ef command-line tool globally.
• Add a migration — Create a migration from model changes.
• Apply migrations — Update the database to the latest migration.
• Remove the last migration — Delete the most recent migration, if it has not been applied.
• Generate a SQL script — Write the SQL for all migrations to a file, for review or deployment.
• Register a DbContext — Add Entity Framework Core with PostgreSQL to dependency injection.

ASP.NET Core code

• Write a minimal API — Define endpoints without controllers.
• Register a service — Add a class to dependency injection with a scoped lifetime.
• Read configuration — Read a value from appsettings.json or an environment variable.
• Set up user secrets — Create a secrets store for development, kept outside your repository.
• Store a development secret — Save a secret value without putting it in appsettings.json. Use your own value.
• Add authentication and authorization — Order matters: authentication goes before authorization.
• Map controllers — Enable attribute-routed controllers.

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