ASP.NET Core 8 Preview 1 Available

Published on feb 28, 2023

ASP.NET Core-powered web development enhancements will also be available in the upcoming .NET version. ASP.NET Core features are enhanced in .NET 8. Authentication & Authorization, Native AOT, and Blazor United are the most recent advancements. Through Blazor United, you can use a single Blazor-based architecture that supports both server-side rendering and client-side interaction.

ASP.NET Core authentication and authorization will also be discussed in specific cases. .NET 8 will address this issue. With the new version, developers can easily create and test web-based authentication and authorization. A series of simple procedures and tools will assist with deploying apps into real-world settings, as well as rapid and efficient security diagnostics.

AOT was the platform-specific executable used to enable faster startup and reduce memory consumption before the latest major version of .NET. With .NET 8, ASP.NET Core apps will be able to support native AOT support, starting with cloud-based API apps. On GitHub, you can find more information.

Along with the changes already mentioned, ASP.NET Core will receive many additional improvements in .NET 8. The ASP.NET Core roadmap for .NET 8 provides a comprehensive summary of these enhancements. ASP.NETCore features route tooling. “Route tooling” is an introduction to .NET 8 that automatically adapts to the IDE you’re using based on Roslyn. Routers are used in Minimal APIs, Web APIs, Razor Pages, and Blazor Pages to customize HTTP requests. New features in .NET 8 include route syntax highlighting, autocomplete for parameter and route names, autocomplete for route constraints, and route analyzers and fixers. By supporting Minimal APIs, Web APIs, and Blazor, developers will learn and use routing more easily.

The upcoming .NET version will also feature ASP.NET Core-powered web development advances, Microsoft announced last week. The .NET 8 version focuses on ASP.NET Core. Authentication & Authorization, Native AOT, and Blazor United will be the focus of recent advancements. By using Blazor United, it will be possible to render both server-side and client-side with a single Blazor-based architecture.

Immo Landwerth, .NET Program Manager

By using Blazor, we are combining the benefits of server-side and client-side rendering in .NET 8. This effort is currently called Blazor United. You can use Blazor United for server-side rendering and full client-side interactivity using Blazor Server or WebAssembly. In a single project, you can switch between different rendering modes and even mix them together. Blazor United will also enable new rendering capabilities, like streaming rendering and progressive enhancement of navigations and form posts.

In ASP.NET Core applications, authentication and authorization are also complex. The upcoming .NET 8 version will address this. It offers developers a hassle-free, logical, and well-documented experience for creating and testing web-based authentication and authorization. Also included are simple procedures and tools for deploying apps to real-world settings, as well as diagnostics to address security issues rapidly and efficiently.

Previous versions of .NET allowed console projects to be published as native AOTs, which generated platform-specific executables without the JIT runtime and enabled faster startup. The new version of .NET will support native AOT for ASP.NET Core, beginning with cloud-focused API apps meeting certain performance requirements. The official GitHub issue has more resources.

ASP.NET Core will get many more improvements in .NET 8. ASP.NET Core’s roadmap for .NET 8, which is available on GitHub, summarizes these enhancements. Route tooling is one of the new ASP.NETCore features. Route tooling in .NET 8 is built on Roslyn and automatically adapts to the IDE you’re using. In Minimal APIs, Web APIs, Razor Pages, and Blazor, routing is used to customize how HTTP requests are mapped to code. A new feature of .NET 8 is route syntax highlighting, autocomplete for parameter and route names, and autocomplete for route constraints. By making routing easier to learn and use for developers, we support Minimal APIs, Web APIs, and Blazor.

In .NET 8, route constraints have been optimized to improve performance. Alpha constraints now use source-generated regex, duplicates are shared across routes, and regex constraints are now compiled, all contributing to faster runtimes.

In .NET 8, an API developer’s analyzer will warn when IHeaderDictionary.Add is used and suggest switching to the indexer or append API.

Kestrel now supports inter-process communication (IPC) using named pipes, which enables communication between Windows applications. MacOS now supports Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN), allowing TLS and HTTP/2 to be used with ASP.NET Core. Particularly useful for gRPC apps that require HTTP/2. The HTTP/3 protocol was standardized in June 2022, and it offers benefits like faster connection setup, no head-of-line blocking, and better network transitions. In .NET 7, ASP.NET Core and Kestrel supported HTTP/3, and in .NET 8, HTTP/3 will be enabled by default.

.NET 8 Preview 1 includes hot reloading for instance fields, properties, and events, symbol servers for .NET on WebAssembly debugging, Blazor WebAssembly debugging in Firefox, dispatching exceptions to Blazor’s SynchronizationContext, and experimental Webcil .NET assembly format. Additionally, gRPC JSON transcoding no longer requires http.proto or annotations.proto. You can find more details about this release in the official documentation.

Download .NET 8 Preview 1. The latest Visual Studio 2022 preview edition is recommended for Windows users. There is no .NET 8 support in Visual Studio for Mac.