Is C# now the next cool language to learn? With its versatility, new features and being OSS, it just might. Find out how .NET Core has made C# the next big thing

What’s new?

Here’s a sampling of the great new features and improvements in ASP.NET Core for .NET 7:

• Servers and runtime
  • Rating limiting: Limit the rate of handled requests using flexible endpoint configuration and policies.
  • Output caching: Configure output caching to reduce to more efficiently handle request.
  • Request decompression: Accept requests with compressed content.
  • HTTP/3: Built-in support for HTTP/3, the latest HTTP version based on the new QUIC multiplexed transport protocol.
  • WebSockets over HTTP/2: Use WebSockets over HTTP/2 connections.
  • WebTransport (experimental): Create streams and data grams over HTTP/3 with experimental support for WebTransport.
• Minimal APIs
  • Endpoint filters: Use endpoint filters to run cross-cutting code before or after a route handler.
  • Typed results: Return strongly typed results from minimal APIs.
  • Route groups: Organize groups of endpoints with a common prefix
• gRPC
  • JSON transcoding: Expand the reach of your gRPC services by also exposing them as JSON-based APIs
  • OpenAPI with JSON transcoding (experimenal): Use experimental support for generating OpenAPI specs for your gRPC JSON transcoded services.
  • gRPC health checks: Report and check the health of gRPC server apps.
  • gRPC client AddCallCredentials : Create clients that send authorized requests using bearer tokens.
• SignalR
  • Client results: Return client results to the server in response to requests from the server.
• MVC
  • Nullable view and page models: Nullable page and view models are now supported to improve the experience when using null state checking.
• Blazor
  • Custom elements: Build standard HTML custom elements with Blazor to integrate Blazor components with any JavaScript-based app.
  • Handle location changing events: Intercept location changing events to create custom user experiences when navigating.
  • Bind after/get/set modifiers: Run async logic after data binding and independently control how data binding gets and sets the data.
  • Dynamic authentication requests: Create dynamic authentication requests at runtime with custom parameters to handle advanced authentication scenarios in Blazor WebAssembly apps.
  • Improved JavaScript interop on WebAssembly: Optimize JavaScript interop call when running on WebAssembly using the new [JSImport]/[JSExport] support.
  • WebAssembly SIMD & exception handling: Improve performance with .NET WebAssembly ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation using WebAssembly SIMD and exception handling support. 

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to setup and install ASP.NET Core 2.1 on Linux. I did it for the first time in 15 minutes with no previous experience with .NET Core on Linux. I did it the second time, in production, in 5 minutes by following these instructions.

In this article, I show you how to install the .NET Core runtime on CentOS, how to get a sample ASP.NET Core project running on Kestrel as a service for reliability, and how to configure both the code and the firewall to enable remote access. Finally, I discuss what I would do differently for actual production usage. 

Here are some of the best .NET Core practices to help developers translate their clients’ business logic into reality. 

Akka.NET is an open-source actor model framework written exclusively for Microsoft.NET in C# and compatible with .NET Core. It simplifies the building of scalable, concurrent, high-throughput, and low-latency systems, making life for software developers a bit easier. Zoran Maksimovic's Akka.NET Succinctly will show readers what an actor model is and how to work with actors in Akka.NET, taking them from an actor's lifecycle through to unit testing.

MembershipReboot is a user identity management and authentication library. It has nothing to do with the ASP.NET Membership Provider, but was inspired by it due to frustrations with the built-in ASP.NET Membership system. The goals are to improve upon and provide missing features from ASP.NET Membership. It is designed to encapsulate the important security logic while leaving most of the other aspects of account management either configurable or extensible for application developers to customize as needed. 

This article explains how to get started with WebSockets in ASP.NET  Core. WebSocket is a protocol that enables two-way persistent communication channels over TCP connections. It is used for applications such as chat, stock tickers, games, anywhere you want real-time functionality in a web application.