ASP.NET Core

Aurelia with JavaScriptServices: Call to Node module failed

/ ASP.NET Core, Aurelia, JavaScript / , , , , ,

This is going to be a quick post on how to solve an error I go on a new Aurelia project created using JavaScriptServices. For a walk though of creating a project using JavaScripServices check out this post.

The problem

The project got created and would build with no issues, but when I tried to run it I got the following error.

Call to Node module failed with error: Error: Cannot find module ‘./wwwroot/dist/vendor-manifest.json’

The fix

After a little bit of searching I came across this issue on the JavaScriptServices repo with the same error. One of the comments on the issue suggested running the following command from a command prompt in the same directory as your project.

webpack --config webpack.config.vendor.js

After running that command everything worked like a charm! It is worth noting that the command above can be found in project.json in the scripts prepublish section. From the little bit of reading I did it looks like this command should be rerun anytime a new vendor dependency is added.

JavaScriptServices

I can’t get over how awesome JavaScriptServies is. Steve Sanderson (and team) have done an amazing job. Even with this little hiccup I got this new project up and running 10 times faster than I would have otherwise. It is also going to give me a push to look into webpack.

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Angular 2 with ASP.NET Core using JavaScriptServices

/ Angular 2, ASP.NET Core, JavaScript / , , , , ,

This was going to be the fist in a series of posts covering getting started using the RTM versions of ASP.NET Core and Angular 2 together which was going to follow a similar path as the series on Aurelia and ASP.NET Core the first entry of which can be found here.

In the process of writing this post I was reminded of JavaScripServices (they recently added Aurelia support!) and will be using it to get this project up and running instead of doing the work manually.

The code found here can be used as a starting point. The repo contains a solutions with an ASP.NET Core API (Contacts) project and a MCV 6 (Aurelia) project. This post will be add a new MVC 6 project for Angular 2.

JavaScriptServices introduction

JavaScriptServices is an open source project by Microsoft for ASP.NET Core developers to quickly get up and running with one of many JavaScript front ends. The following is their own description.

JavaScriptServices is a set of technologies for ASP.NET Core developers. It provides infrastructure that you’ll find useful if you use Angular 2 / React / Knockout / etc. on the client, or if you build your client-side resources using Webpack, or otherwise want to execute JavaScript on the server at runtime.

The great thing about using the generator that JavaScriptServcies provides is they handle the integration between all the different tools which can be challenging to get right on your own without a lot of time and research.

Project creation

First step is to install the Yeomen generator via npm using the following command from a command prompt.

npm install -g yo generator-aspnetcore-spa

When installation is complete create a new directory call Angular for the project. In the context of the repo linked above this new directory would be in Contact/src at the same level as the Aurelia and Contacts folders.

Open a command prompt and navigate to the newly created directory and run the following command to kick off the generation process.

yo aspnetcore-spa

This will present you will a list of frameworks to choose from. We are going with Angular 2, but Aurelia, Knockout, React and React with Redux are also available.

yoangular2

Hit enter and it will ask for a project name which gets defaulted to the directory name so just hit enter again unless you want to use a different name. This kicks off the project creation which will take a couple of minutes to complete.

Add new project to existing solution

To include the new Angular project in an existing solution right click on the src folder in the Solution Explorer and select Add > Existing Project.

addexisitingproject

This shows the open file dialog. Navigate to the directory for the new Angular project and select the Angular project file.

addexisitingprojectangular

Wrapping up

Set the Angular project as the start up project and hit run and you will find yourself in a fully functional Angular 2 application. It is amazing how simple JavaScriptServices makes getting started with a new project.

The tool setup seems to be one of the biggest pain points with any SPA type JavaScript framework. Aurelia is a little friendlier to ASP.NET Core out of the box than Angular 2, but it still isn’t the simplest process ever. JavaScriptServices is one of those thing I wish I had tried out sooner.

In the near future I am going to redo the Aurelia project in this solution using JavaScriptServices. From there I will come back to the Angular project created in this post and integrate it with the Contact API used in the existing Aurelia application.

Completed code for this post can be found here.

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Migration from ASP.NET Core 1.0.x to 1.1

/ .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core / , , , ,

UPDATE: For a guide dealing with the conversion to csproj/Visual Studio 2017 check out this post.

On November 16th .NET Core 1.1 was released including ASP.NET Core 1.1 and Entity Framework 1.1. Each of the links contain the details of what was including in the 1.1 release. Unlike some of the previous migrations this is pretty simple.

I will be using my normal ASP.NET Basics solution for this upgrade. The examples will be out of the Contacts project. This post is coming out of order so the repo that goes with this post will contain some items not covered in posts yet. The starting point of the repo can be found here.

Installation

Make sure you already have Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 installed with .NET Core 1.0.1 tools Preview 2 installed. If not use the previous links to install the needed versions. Next head over to the download page for .NET Core and under All downloads and select Current and SDK and select the download for your OS.

downloaddotnet

Another option is to install Visual Studio 2017 RC which can be found here.

Project.json

Project.json is the file that contains all the versions of assembles used by the application. A couple of items need to edited by hand and the rest can be updated using NuGet UI or you can change them all by hand if you like.

First the by hand items. The platform version needs to be updated to 1.1.

Before:
"Microsoft.NETCore.App": {
      "version": "1.0.0",
      "type": "platform"
    }

After:
"Microsoft.NETCore.App": {
      "version": "1.1.0",
      "type": "platform"
    }

The second by hand item is the net core app version in the frameworks section.

Before:
"frameworks": {
  "netcoreapp1.0": {
    "imports": [
      "dotnet5.6",
      "portable-net45+win8"
    ]
  }

After:
"frameworks": {
  "netcoreapp1.1": {
    "imports": [
      "dotnet5.6",
      "portable-net45+win8"
    ]
  }

Here is the resulting dependencies and tools sections.

"dependencies": {
  "Microsoft.NETCore.App": {
    "version": "1.1.0",
    "type": "platform"
  },
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.Cookies": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Diagnostics": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Diagnostics.EntityFrameworkCore": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity.EntityFrameworkCore": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Razor.Tools": {
    "version": "1.1.0-preview4-final",
    "type": "build"
  },
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.IISIntegration": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.StaticFiles": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer.Design": {
    "version": "1.1.0",
    "type": "build"
  },
  "Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools": {
    "version": "1.0.0-preview3-final",
    "type": "build"
  },
  "Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.EnvironmentVariables": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.UserSecrets": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.Extensions.Logging": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Console": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Debug": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.Extensions.Options.ConfigurationExtensions": "1.1.0",
  "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.BrowserLink.Loader": "14.1.0",
  "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.CodeGeneration.Tools": {
    "version": "1.1.0-preview4-final",
    "type": "build"
  },
  "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.CodeGenerators.Mvc": {
    "version": "1.1.0-preview4-final",
    "type": "build"
  },
  "BundlerMinifier.Core": "2.2.301"
},

"tools": {
  "BundlerMinifier.Core": "2.2.301",
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Razor.Tools": "1.1.0-preview4-final",
  "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.IISIntegration.Tools": "1.1.0-preview4-final",
  "Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools": "1.1.0-preview4-final",
  "Microsoft.Extensions.SecretManager.Tools": "1.1.0-preview4-final",
  "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.CodeGeneration.Tools": {
    "version": "1.1.0-preview4-final",
    "imports": [
      "portable-net45+win8"
    ]
  }
}

Make note that using the NuGet UI will update the dependencies but not the tools section. For some reason the tools section doesn’t seem to have intellisense so I ended up searching the NuGet site to find the new versions. If you do end up changing the tooling version I recommend doing a dotnet restore in the project directory from the command prompt to ensure the proper versions get downloaded.

Wrapping up

As I said this was a really pain less migration. Make sure you check out the release pages ( .NET Core 1.1, ASP.NET Core 1.1 and Entity Framework 1.1) for the details on what has changed. For example ASP.NET Core has gotten significant performance increases with this release as well as URL Rewriting Middleware and Response Caching Middleware.

It has been less than six months since the initial release of ASP.NET Core until the 1.1 release which a huge increase in the pace of releases compared regular ASP.NET. From what I have see this is a pace the team will continue. Check out the roadmap for a preview of things coming in 1.2.

The code in its final state can be found here.

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