Programming ASP.NET Core

Introduction

The book "Programming ASP.NET Core" by recognized experts in the .NET world — Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello — is a fundamental guide to building modern web applications on the ASP.NET Core platform. Published in 2018, it remains relevant today, covering the key concepts that underpin the latest versions of the framework. This is not just a syntax reference, but a deep dive into architecture, design patterns, and best development practices.

What is this book about?

The book is structured as a sequential journey from basics to complex topics. The authors begin by explaining the philosophy of ASP.NET Core — modularity, cross-platform capability, and performance. Then they cover in detail:

• Middleware and the request processing pipeline — how the chain of HTTP request processing is built and configured.
• Dependency Injection (DI) — the built-in container, service registration, and object lifetime management.
• Configuration and logging — working with appsettings.json, environment variables, structured logging.
• MVC and Razor Pages — comparison of the two approaches, routing, models, views, validation.
• Web API and REST — creating full-fledged HTTP services, response formatting, versioning.
• Entity Framework Core — working with databases, migrations, query performance.
• Security — authentication (Cookie, JWT), authorization, protection against CSRF and XSS.
• Testing — unit and integration tests, mock objects.
• Deployment — publishing to IIS, Linux, Docker.

Who is this book for?

The book is aimed at developers already familiar with C# and having basic web development experience. It will be useful for:

• Beginning .NET developers who want to transition from classic ASP.NET to modern ASP.NET Core.
• Experienced programmers looking to systematize their knowledge and learn best practices from industry gurus.
• Architects who design scalable and maintainable web systems.

What will the reader learn?

After working through this book, the reader will be able to:

• Understand the internal structure of ASP.NET Core and its differences from previous versions.
• Design middleware components to customize request processing.
• Effectively use the built-in DI container.
• Build a flexible configuration system for different environments.
• Create both MVC applications with full-featured views and lightweight Web APIs.
• Work with Entity Framework Core for data access.
• Implement authentication and authorization using Identity and JWT.
• Write tests for controllers and services.
• Deploy applications to the cloud and on-premises servers.

Strengths of the book

The main advantage of the book is its depth and systematic approach. The authors do not just list APIs, but explain why the framework is designed the way it is and what problems each component solves. The book contains many practical code examples that can be immediately adapted for your own projects. The chapters on architectural decisions deserve special attention: for example, the comparison of Razor Pages and MVC, or the discussion of when to use Web API versus SignalR. The writing style is clear, without unnecessary filler, yet detailed enough to leave no questions unanswered.

Who is it recommended for?

We strongly recommend this book to everyone seriously involved in web development on the .NET platform. It will be an excellent addition to the official documentation and will help develop proper architectural thinking. If you want to not just