Writing integration tests for ASP.NET Core controller actions used for file uploads is not a rare need. It is fully supported by ASP.NET Core integration tests system. This post shows how to write integration tests for single and multiple file uploads.

Getting started

Suppose we have controller action for file upload that supports multiple files. It uses complex composite command for image file analysis and saving. Command is injected to action by framework-level dependency injection using controller action injection.

[HttpPost]
[Authorize(Roles = "Admin")]
public async Task<IActionResult> Upload(IList<IFormFile> files, int? parentFolderId,
                                        [FromServices]SavePhotoCommand savePhotoCommand)
{
    foreach(var file in files)
    {
        var model = new PhotoEditModel();
        model.FileName = Path.GetFileName(file.FileName);
        model.Thumbnail = Path.GetFileName(file.FileName);
        model.ParentFolderId = parentFolderId;
        model.File = file;
 
        list.AddRange(savePhotoCommand.Validate(model));
 
        await savePhotoCommand.Execute(model);
    }
 
    ViewBag.Messages = savePhotoCommand.Messages;
 
    return View();
}

We want to write integration tests for this action but we need to upload at least one file to make sure that command doesn’t fail.

Making files available for integration tests

It’s good practice to have files for testing available no matter where tests are run. It’s specially true when writing code in team or using continuous integration server to run integration tests. If we don’t have many files and the files are not large then we can include those files in project.

Important thing is to specify in Visual Studio that these files are copied to output folder.

Same way it’s possible to use also other types of files and nobody stops us creating multiple folders or folder trees if we want to organize files better.

Uploading files in integration tests

Here is integration tests class for controller mentioned above. Right now there’s only one test and it is testing Upload action. Notice how image files are loaded from TestPhotos folder to file streams and how form data object is built using the file streams.

public class PhotosControllerTests : IClassFixture<WebApplicationFactory<Startup>>
{
    private readonly WebApplicationFactory<Startup> _factory;
 
    public PhotosControllerTests(WebApplicationFactory<Startup> factory)
    {
        _factory = factory;
    }
 
    [Fact]
    public async Task Upload_SavesPhotoAndReturnSuccess()
    {
        // Arrange
        var expectedContentType = "text/html; charset=utf-8";
        var url = "Photos/Upload";
        var options = new WebApplicationFactoryClientOptions { AllowAutoRedirect = false };
        var client = _factory.CreateClient(options);
 
        // Act
        HttpResponseMessage response;
 
        using (var file1 = File.OpenRead(@"TestPhotos\rt-n66u.jpg.webp"))
        using (var content1 = new StreamContent(file1))
        using (var file2 = File.OpenRead(@"TestPhotos\speedtest.png.webp"))
        using (var content2 = new StreamContent(file2))
        using (var formData = new MultipartFormDataContent())
        {
            // Add file (file, field name, file name)
            formData.Add(content1, "files", "rt-n66u.jpg.webp");
            formData.Add(content2, "files", "speedtest.png.webp");
 
            response = await client.PostAsync(url, formData);
        }
 
        // Assert
        response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
        var responseString = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
 
        Assert.NotEmpty(responseString);
        Assert.Equal(expectedContentType, response.Content.Headers.ContentType.ToString());
 
        response.Dispose();
        client.Dispose();
    }
}

For actions that accept only one file we need only one call to Add() method of formData.

Wrapping up

Integration tests mechanism in ASP.NET Core is flexible enough to support also more advanced scenarios like file uploads in tests. It’s not very straightforward and we can’t just call few methods of HTTP client to do it but it’s still easy enough once we know the tricks. If we keep test files in integration tests project then we don’t have to worry about getting files to machine where integration tests are running.

Almost every project will have some settings that need to be configured and changed depending on the environment, or secrets that you don't want to hard code into your repository. The classic example is connection strings and passwords etc which in ASP.NET 4 were often stored in the <applicationSettings> section of web.config.

In ASP.NET Core this model of configuration has been significantly extended and enhanced. Application settings can be stored in multiple places - environment variables, appsettings.json, user secrets etc - and easily accessed through the same interface in your application. Further to this, the new configuration system in ASP.NET allows (actually, enforces) strongly typed settings using the IOptions<> pattern.

While working on an RC2 project the other day, I was trying to use this facility to bind a custom Configuration class, but for the life of me I couldn't get it to bind my properties. Partly that was down to the documentation being somewhat out of date since the launch of RC2, and partly down to the way binding works using reflection. In this post I'm going to go into demonstrate the power of the IOptions<> pattern, and describe a few of the problems I ran in to and how to solve them.

Strongly typed configuration

In ASP.NET Core, there is now no default AppSettings["MySettingKey"] way to get settings. Instead, the recommended approach is to create a strongly typed configuration class with a structure that matches a section in your configuration file (or wherever your configuration is being loaded from):

public class MySettings
{
    public string StringSetting { get; set; }
    public int IntSetting { get; set; }
}

Would map to the lower section in the appsettings.json below.

{
  "Logging": {
    "IncludeScopes": false,
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Debug",
      "System": "Information",
      "Microsoft": "Information"
    }
  },
  "MySettings": {
    "StringSetting": "My Value",
    "IntSetting": 23
  }
}

Binding the configuration to your classes

In order to ensure your appsettings.json file is bound to the MySettings class, you need to do 2 things.

1. Setup the ConfigurationBuilder to load your file

2. Bind your settings class to a configuration section

When you create a new ASP.NET Core application from the default templates, the ConfigurationBuilder is already configured in Startup.cs to load settings from environment variables, appsettings.json, and in development environments, from user secrets:

public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env)
{
    var builder = new ConfigurationBuilder()
        .SetBasePath(env.ContentRootPath)
        .AddJsonFile("appsettings.json", optional: true, reloadOnChange: true)
        .AddJsonFile($"appsettings.{env.EnvironmentName}.json", optional: true);

    if (env.IsDevelopment())
    {
        builder.AddUserSecrets();
    }

    builder.AddEnvironmentVariables();
    Configuration = builder.Build();
}

If you need to load your configuration from another source then this is the place to do it, but for most common situations this setup should suffice. There are a number of additional configuration providers that can be used to bind other sources, such as xml files for example.

In order to bind a settings class to your configuration you need to configure this in the ConfigureServices method of Startup.cs:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.Configure<MySettings>(options => Configuration.GetSection("MySettings").Bind(options));
}

Note: The syntax for model binding has changed from RC1 to RC2 and was one of the issues I was battling with. The previous method, using services.Configure<MySettings>(Configuration.GetSection("MySettings")), is no longer available

You may also need to add the configuration binder package to the dependencies section of your project.json:

"dependencies": {
  ...
  "Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Binder": "1.0.0-rc2-final"
  ...
}

Using your configuration class

When you need to access the values of MySettings you just need to inject an instance of an IOptions<> class into the constructor of your consuming class, and let dependency injection handle the rest:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    private MySettings _settings;
    public HomeController(IOptions<MySettings> settings)
    {
        _settings = settings.Value
        // _settings.StringSetting == "My Value";
    }
}

The IOptions<> service exposes a Value property which contains your configured MySettings class.

It's important to note that there doesn't appear to be a way to access the raw IConfigurationRoot through dependency injection, so the strongly typed route is the only way to get to your settings.

You can expose the IConfigurationRoot directly to the DI container using services.AddSingleton(Configuration). (Thanks Saša Ćetković for pointing that out!)

Complex configuration classes

The example shown above is all very nice, but what if you have a very complex configuration, nested types, collections, the whole 9 yards?

public class MySettings
{
    public string StringSetting { get; set; }
    public int IntSetting { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, InnerClass> Dict { get; set; }
    public List<string> ListOfValues { get; set; }
    public MyEnum AnEnum { get; set; }
}

public class InnerClass
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public bool IsEnabled { get; set; } = true;
}

public enum MyEnum
{
    None = 0,
    Lots = 1
}

Amazingly we can bind that using the same configure<MySettings> call to the following, and it all just works:

{
  "MySettings": {
    "StringSetting": "My Value",
    "IntSetting": 23,
    "AnEnum": "Lots",
    "ListOfValues": ["Value1", "Value2"],
    "Dict": {
      "FirstKey": {
        "Name": "First Class",
           "IsEnabled":  false
      },
      "SecondKey": {
        "Name": "Second Class"
      }
    }
  }
}

When values aren't provided, they get their default values, (e.g. MySettings.Dict["SecondKey].IsEnabled == true). Dictionaries, lists and enums are all bound correctly. That is until they aren't...

Models that won't bind

So after I'd beaten the RC2 syntax change in to submission, I thought I was home and dry, but I still couldn't get my configuration class to bind correctly. Getting frustrated, I decided to dive in to the source code for the binder and see what's going on (woo, open source!).

It was there I found a number of interesting cases where a model's properties won't be bound even if there are appropriate configuration values. Most of them are fairly obvious, but could feasibly sting you if you're not aware of them. I am only going to go into scenarios that do not throw exceptions, as these seem like the hardest ones to figure out.

Properties must have a public Get method

The properties of your configuration class must have a getter, which is public and must not be an indexer, so none of these properties would bind:

private string _noGetter;
private string[] _arr;

public string NoGetter { set { _noGetter = value; } }
public string NonPublicGetter { set { _noGetter = value; } }
public string this[int i]
{
    get { return _arr[i]; }
    set { _arr[i] = value; }
}

Properties must have a public Set method...

Similarly, properties must have a public setter, so again, none of these would bind:

public string NoGetter { get; }
public string NonPublicGetter { get; private set; }

...Except when they don't have to

The public setter is actually only required if the value being bound is null. If it's a simple type like a string or and int, then the setter is required as there's no way to change the value. You can create readonly properties with default values, but they just won't be bound. For properties which are complex types, you don't need a setter, as long as the value has a value at binding time:

public MyInnerClass ComplexProperty { get; } = new MyInnerClass();
public List<string> ListValues { get; } = new List<string>();
public Dictionary<string, string> DictionaryValue1 { get; } = new Dictionary<string,string>();
private Dictionary<string, string> _dict = new Dictionary<string,string>();
public Dictionary<string, string> DictionaryValue2 { get { return _dict; } }

The sub properties of the MyInnerClass object returned by ComplexProperty would be bound, values would be added to the collection in ListValues, and KeyValuePairs would be added to the dictionaries.

Dictionaries must have string keys

This is one of the gotchas that got me! While integers, are obviously perfectly valid keys to dictionaries usually, they are not allowed in this case thanks to this snippet in ConfigurationBinder.BindDictionary:

var typeInfo = dictionaryType.GetTypeInfo();

// IDictionary<K,V> is guaranteed to have exactly two parameters
var keyType = typeInfo.GenericTypeArguments[0];
var valueType = typeInfo.GenericTypeArguments[1];

if (keyType != typeof(string))
{
    // We only support string keys
    return;
}

Don't expose IDictionary

This is another one that got me accidentally. While coding to interfaces is nice, the model binder uses reflection and Activator.CreateInstance(type) to create the classes to be bound. If your properties are interfaces or abstract then the binder will throw when trying to create them.

If you are exposing your properties as a readonly getter however, then the binder does not need to create the property and you might think the configuration class would bind correctly. And that is true in almost all cases. Unforunately while the binder can bind any properties which are a type that derives from IDictionary<,>, it will not bind an IDictionary<,> property directly. This leaves you with the following situation:

public interface IMyDictionary<TKey, TValue> : IDictionary<TKey, TValue> { }

public class MyDictionary<TKey, TValue>
    : Dictionary<TKey, TValue>, IMyDictionary<TKey, TValue>
{
}

public class MySettings
{
  public IDictionary<string, string> WontBind { get; } = new Dictionary<string, string>();
  public IMyDictionary<string, string> WillBind { get; } = new MyDictionary<string, string>();
}

Our wrapper type IMyDictionary which is really just an IDictionary will be bound, whereas the directly exposed IMyDictionary will not. This doesn't feel right to me and I've raised an issue with the team.

Make properties Implementing ICollection also expose an Add method

Types deriving from ICollection<> are automatically bound in the same way as dictionaries, however the ICollection<> interface exposes no methods to add an object to the collection, only methods for enumerating and counting. It may seem strange then that it is this interface the binder looks for when checking whether a property can be bound.

If a property exposes a type that implements ICollection<> (and is not an ICollection<> itself, as for IDictionary above, though that makes sense in this case), then it is a candidate for binding. In order to add an item to the collection, reflection is used to invoke an Add method on the type:

var addMethod = typeInfo.GetDeclaredMethod("Add");
addMethod.Invoke(collection, new[] { item });

If an add method on the exposed type does not exist (e.g. it could be a ReadOnlyCollection<>), then this property will not be bound, but no error will be thrown, you will just get an empty collection. This one feels a little nasty to me, but I guess the common use case is you will be exposing List<> and IList<> etc. Feels like they should be looking for IList<> if that is what they need though!

Summary

The strongly typed configuration is a great addition to ASP.NET Core, providing a clean way to apply the Interface Segregation Principle to your configuration. Currently it seems more convoluted to retrieve your settings than tin ASP.NET 4, but I wouldn't be surprised if they add some convenience methods for quickly accessing values in a forthcoming release.

It's important to consider the gotchas described if you're having trouble binding values (and you're not getting an exceptions thrown). Pay particular attention to your collections, as that's where my issues arose.

I'm building a tutorial (hopefully soon to be a post) and in that tutorial I needed to use Session for some quick-and-dirty data storage. Unfortunately when I tried to use Session in my default project, it was nowhere to be found, and I was sent down a small rabbit hole trying to find it. This post will walk through a reminder of what Session is, where to find it in ASP.NET Core 1.0, an overview of the new extension methods available, and building our own custom extension method. Let's get started!

What is Session?

If you're just starting to develop in ASP.NET, you may not have encountered Session before. Session is a serialized collection of objects that are related to the current user's session. The values are usually stored on the local server memory, but there are alternate architectures where the values can be stored in a SQL database or other distributed storage solutions, especially when your servers are part of a server farm.

You can store any data you like in Session, however any data you store will only be available to the current user as long as the session is active. This means that if that user logs out, the Session data is lost; if you need to keep this data you have to find another way to store it.

Finding the Session

ASP.NET Core 1.0 has been written from the ground up to be a modular, choose-what-you-need framework. What this means is that you must explicitly include any packages you want to use in your project.

This allows us developers to maintain tight control over what functionality our ASP.NET Core projects actually need, and exclude anything that is not necessary.

In our case, Session is considered to be one of these "additional" packages. In order to include that package we need to add a reference to Microsoft.AspNet.Session in the project.json file. If we wanted to use memory as our caching backend, we would also include Microsoft.Extensions.Caching.Memory.

Once we've got the package included in our project, we need to make it available to the Services layer by modifying the ConfigureServices()method in the Startup file, like so:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) 
{
    ...
    services.AddMemoryCache();
    services.AddSession(options =>
    {
        options.IdleTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(60);
        options.CookieName = ".MyCoreApp";
    });
    ...
}

With all of these steps completed, you can now use Session in your projects just like in any other ASP.NET application. If you wanted to use a different cache backend (rather than memory) you could grab a different NuGet package like Redis or SqlServer. Don't forget to check NuGet if you can't find the functionality you need; it is probably there and you just need to download it.

How to Use Session

ASP.NET Core 1.0 has introduced some new extension methods that we can use for accessing and storing Session values. The odd thing is that these extensions are not in Microsoft.AspNet.Session; rather, they are in Microsoft.AspNet.Http, and so we will need to add that package.

Once we've got that package included, we can start using the extension methods:

[HttpGet]
public IActionResult Index() 
{
    var userID = Context.Session.GetInt("UserID");
    var userName = Context.Session.GetString("UserName");
    return View();
}

[HttpGet]
public IActionResult Default() 
{
    Context.Session.SetInt("UserID", 5);
    Context.Session.SetString("UserName", "John Smith");
    return View();
}

The new extension methods are:

• Get: Returns a byte array for the specified Session object.
• GetInt: Returns an integer value for the specified Session object.
• GetString: Returns a string value for the specified Session object.
• Set: Sets a byte array for the specified Session object.
• SetInt: Sets an integer value for the specified Session object.
• SetString: Sets a string value for the specified Session object.

Why do only these extensions exist, and not GetDouble, GetDateTime, etc? I'm really not sure. If I had to guess I'd say it is to ensure that the values are serializable, but don't quote me on that. If anybody knows the real reason, I'd love to hear it!

Creating Extension Methods

I'm not completely satisfied with these extensions; they don't have enough functionality for my tastes, and so I'm gonna build some more. Specifically, I want to build extensions that will store a DateTime in session and retrieve it.

Here's the method signatures for these extensions:

public static DateTime? GetDateTime(this ISessionCollection collection, string key) 
{

}

public static void SetDateTime(this ISessionCollection collection, string key, DateTime value) 
{

}

The ISessionCollection interface is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of items stored in Session.

Let's tackle the SetDateTime() method first. DateTimes are weird because they are not inherently serializable, but they can be converted to a serializable type: long. So, we must convert the given DateTime value to a long before it can be stored.

public static void SetDateTime(this ISessionCollection collection, string key, DateTime value) 
{
    collection.Set(key, BitConverter.GetBytes(value.Ticks));
}

The BitConverter class allows us to convert byte arrays into other types easily.

Now we can tackle the GetDateTime() method. There are two things we need to keep in mind when building this extension. First, it is entirely possible that there will be no value in Session for the specified key; if this happens, we should return null. Second, we are storing the DateTime as a long, and therefore we need to serialize it back into a DateTime type; luckily the DateTime constructor makes this really easy. The final code for the method looks like this:

public static DateTime? GetDateTime(this ISessionCollection collection, string key) 
{
    var data = collection.Get(key);
    if(data == null)
    {
        return null;
    }

    long dateInt = BitConverter.ToInt64(data, 0);
    return new DateTime(dateInt);
}

Now we can use these extensions in addition to the ones already defined.

Now we've seen Session in action, including what package to use from NuGet, what extension methods are available, and even how to build our own extension method. Let me know if this helped you out in the comments!

Happy Coding!

When you build ASP.NET Core applications and you plan on running your applications on IIS you'll find that the way that Core applications work in IIS is radically different than in previous versions of ASP.NET.

In this post I'll explain how ASP.NET Core runs in the context of IIS and how you can deploy your ASP.NET Core application to IIS.

Setting Up Your IIS and ASP.NET Core

The most important thing to understand about hosting ASP.NET Core is that it runs as a standalone, out of process Console application. It's not hosted inside of IIS and it doesn't need IIS to run. ASP.NET Core applications have their own self-hosted Web server and process requests internally using this self-hosted server instance.

You can however run IIS as a front end proxy for ASP.NET Core applications, because Kestrel is a raw Web server that doesn't support all features a full server like IIS supports. This is actually a recommended practice on Windows in order to provide port 80/443 forwarding which kestrel doesn't support directly. For Windows IIS (or another reverse proxy) will continue to be an important part of the server even with ASP.NET Core applications.

Run Your ASP.NET Core Site

To run your ASP.NET Core site, it is quite different with your previous ASP.NET version. ASP.NET Core runs its own web server using Kestrel component. Kestrel is a .NET Web Server implementation that has been heavily optimized for throughput performance. It's fast and functional in getting network requests into your application, but it's 'just' a raw Web server. It does not include Web management services as a full featured server like IIS does.

If you run on Windows you will likely want to run Kestrel behind IIS to gain infrastructure features like port 80/443 forwarding via Host Headers, process lifetime management and certificate management to name a few.

ASP.NET Core applications are standalone Console applications invoked through the dotnet runtime command. They are not loaded into an IIS worker process, but rather loaded through a native IIS module called AspNetCoreModule that executes the external Console application.

Once you've installed the hosting bundle (or you install the .NET Core SDK on your Dev machine) the AspNetCoreModule is available in the IIS native module list:

The AspNetCoreModule is a native IIS module that hooks into the IIS pipeline very early in the request cycle and immediately redirects all traffic to the backend ASP.NET Core application. All requests - even those mapped to top level Handlers like ASPX bypass the IIS pipeline and are forwarded to the ASP.NET Core process. This means you can't easily mix ASP.NET Core and other frameworks in the same Site/Virtual directory, which feels a bit like a step back given that you could easily mix frameworks before in IIS.

While the IIS Site/Virtual still needs an IIS Application Pool to run in, the Application Pool should be set to use No Managed Code. Since the App Pool acts merely as a proxy to forward requests, there's no need to have it instantiate a .NET runtime.

The AspNetCoreModule's job is to ensure that your application gets loaded when the first request comes in and that the process stays loaded if for some reason the application crashes. You essentially get the same behavior as classic ASP.NET applications that are managed by WAS (Windows Activation Service).

Once running, incoming Http requests are handled by this module and then routed to your ASP.NET Core application.

So, requests come in from the Web and int the kernel mode http.sys driver which routes into IIS on the primary port (80) or SSL port (443). The request is then forwarded to your ASP.NET Core application on the HTTP port configured for your application which is not port 80/443. In essence, IIS acts a reverse proxy simply forwarding requests to your ASP.NET Core Web running the Kestrel Web server on a different port.

Kestrel picks up the request and pushes it into the ASP.NET Core middleware pipeline which then handles your request and passes it on to your application logic. The resulting HTTP output is then passed back to IIS which then pushes it back out over the Internet to the HTTP client that initiated the request - a browser, mobile client or application.

The AspNetCoreModule is configured via the web.config file found in the application's root, which points a the startup command (dotnet) and argument (your application's main dll) which are used to launch the .NET Core application. The configuration in the web.config file points the module at your application's root folder and the startup DLL that needs to be launched.

Here's what the web.config looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <!--
    Configure your application settings in appsettings.json. Learn more at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=786380
  -->
  <system.webServer>
    <handlers>
      <add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*"
        modules="AspNetCoreModule" resourceType="Unspecified" />
    </handlers>
    <aspNetCore processPath="dotnet"
                arguments=".\AlbumViewerNetCore.dll"
                stdoutLogEnabled="false"
                stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout"
                forwardWindowsAuthToken="false" />
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

You can see that module references dotnetexe and the compiled entry point DLL that holds your Main method in your .NET Core application.

IIS is Recommended!

We've already discussed that when running ASP.NET Core on Windows, it's recommended you use IIS as a front end proxy. While it's possible to directly access Kestrel via an IP Address and available port, there are number of reasons why you don't want to expose your application directly this way in production environments.

First and foremost, if you want to have multiple applications running on a single server that all share port 80 and port 443 you can't run Kestrel directly. Kestrel doesn't support host header routing which is required to allow multiple port 80 bindings on a single IP address. Without IIS (or http.sys actually) you currently can't do this using Kestrel alone (and I think this is not planned either).

The AspNetCoreModule running through IIS also provides the necessary process management to ensure that your application gets loaded on the first access, ensures that it stays up and running and is restarted if it crashes. The AspNetCoreModule provides the required process management to ensure that your AspNetCore application is always available even after a crash.

It's also a good idea to run secure SSL requests through IIS proper by setting up certificates through the IIS certificate store and letting IIS handle the SSL authentication. The backplane HTTP request from IIS can then simply fire a non-secure HTTP request to your application. This means only a the front end IIS server needs a certificate even if you have multiple servers on the backplane serving the actual HTTP content.

IIS can also provide static file serving, gzip compression of static content, static file caching, Url Rewriting and a host of other features that IIS provides natively. IIS is really good and efficient at processing non-application requests, so it's worthwhile to take advantage of that. You can let IIS handle the tasks that it's really good at, and leave the dynamic tasks to pass through to your ASP.NET Core application.

The bottom line for all of this is if you are hosting on Windows you'll want to use IIS and the AspNetCoreModule.

How to Publish ASP.NET Core in IIS

In order to run an application with IIS you have to first publish it. There are two ways to that you can do this today:

1. Use dotnet publish

Using dotnet publish builds your application and copies a runnable, self-contained version of the project to a new location on disk. You specify an output folder where all the files are published. This is not so different from classic ASP.NET which ran Web sites out of temp folders. With ASP.NET Core you explicitly publish an application into a location of your choice - the files are no longer hidden away and magically copied around.

A typical publish command may look like this:

dotnet publish
      --framework netcoreapp1.0
      --output "c:\temp\AlbumViewerWeb"
      --configuration Release

If you open this folder you'll find that it contains your original application structure plus all the nuget dependency assemblies dumped into the root folder:

Once you've published your application and you've moved it to your server (via FTP or other mechanism) we can then hook up IIS to the folder.

After that, please just make sure you setup .NET Runtime to No Managed Code as shown above.

And that's really all that needs to happen. You should be able to now navigate to your site or Virtual and the application just runs.

You can now take this locally deployed Web site, copy it to a Web Server (via FTP or direct file copy or other publishing solution), set up a Site or Virtual and you are off to the races.

2. Publish Using Visual Studio

The dotnet publish step works to copy the entire project to a folder, but it doesn't actually publish your project to a Web site (currently - this is likely coming at a later point).

In order to get incremental publishing to work, which is really quite crucial for ASP.NET Core applications because there are so many dependencies, you need to use MsDeploy which is available as part of Visual Studio's Web Publishing features.

Currently the Visual Studio Tooling UI is very incomplete, but the underlying functionality is supported. I'll point out a few tweaks that you can use to get this to work today.

When you go into Visual Studio in the RC2 Web tooling and the Publish dialog, you'll find that you can't create a publish profile that points at IIS. There are options for file and Azure publishing but there's no way through the UI to create a new Web site publish.

However, you can cheat by creating your own .pubxml file and putting it into the \Properties\PublishProfilesfolder in your project.

To create a 'manual profile' in your ASP.NET Core Web project:

• Create a folder \Properties\PublishProfiles
• Create a file <MyProfile>.pubxml

You can copy an existing .pubxml from a non-ASP.NET Core project or create one. Here's an example of a profile that works with IIS:

<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <WebPublishMethod>MSDeploy</WebPublishMethod>
    <LastUsedBuildConfiguration>Release</LastUsedBuildConfiguration>
    <LastUsedPlatform>Any CPU</LastUsedPlatform>
    <SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish>http://samples.west-wind.com/AlbumViewerCore/index.html</SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish>
    <LaunchSiteAfterPublish>True</LaunchSiteAfterPublish>
    <ExcludeApp_Data>False</ExcludeApp_Data>
    <PublishFramework>netcoreapp1.0</PublishFramework>
    <UsePowerShell>True</UsePowerShell>
    <EnableMSDeployAppOffline>True</EnableMSDeployAppOffline>
    <MSDeployServiceURL>https://publish.west-wind.com</MSDeployServiceURL>
    <DeployIisAppPath>samples site/albumviewercore</DeployIisAppPath>
    <RemoteSitePhysicalPath />
    <SkipExtraFilesOnServer>True</SkipExtraFilesOnServer>
    <MSDeployPublishMethod>RemoteAgent</MSDeployPublishMethod>
    <EnableMSDeployBackup>False</EnableMSDeployBackup>
    <UserName>username</UserName>
    <_SavePWD>True</_SavePWD>
    <ADUsesOwinOrOpenIdConnect>False</ADUsesOwinOrOpenIdConnect>
    <AuthType>NTLM</AuthType>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

Once you've created a .pubxml file you can now open the publish dialog in Visual Studio with this Profile selected:

At this point you should be able to publish your site to IIS on a remote server and use incremental updates with your content.

#And it's a Wrap Currently IIS hosting and publishing is not particularly well documented and there are some rough edges around the publishing process. Microsoft knows of these issues and this will get fixed by RTM of ASP.NET Core.

In the meantime I hope this post has provided the information you need to understand how IIS hosting works and a few tweaks that let you use the publishing tools available to get your IIS applications running on your Windows Server.

This is an issue that sometimes you face when you deploying your ASP.NET Core on shared hosting environment.

Problem

HTTP Error 502.5 - Process Failure

Common causes of this issue:

* The application process failed to start
* The application process started but then stopped
* The application process started but failed to listen on the configured port

Although your hosting provider have setup .net core for you, you can face error above. So, how to fix this problems?

Solution

There are 2 issues that cause the above error

#1. Difference ASP.NET Core Version

1. The difference ASP.NET Core version. Microsoft just released newest ASP.NET Core 1.0.1. Maybe you are still using ASP.NET Core 1.0. So, you must upgrade your .net Core version.

2. When you upgraded your app, make sure that your ‘Microsoft.NETCoreApp’ setting in your project.json was changed to:

"Microsoft.NETCore.App": "1.0.1",

3. Fixing your App ‘type’

"Microsoft.NETCore.App": { "version": "1.0.1", "type": "platform" },

#2. Set path to dotnet.exe in the web.config

Here is example to change your web.config file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <!--
    Configure your application settings in appsettings.json. Learn more at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=786380
  -->
  <system.webServer>
    <handlers>
      <add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*" modules="AspNetCoreModule" resourceType="Unspecified" />
    </handlers>
    <aspNetCore processPath="C:\Program Files\dotnet\dotnet.exe" arguments=".\CustomersApp.dll" stdoutLogEnabled="true" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" forwardWindowsAuthToken="false" />
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Conclusion

We hope above tutorial can help you to fix ASP.NET Core problem. This is only our experience to solve above error and hope that will help you. If you need ASP.NET Core hosting, you can visit our site at http://www.hostforlife.eu. We have supported the latest ASP.NET Core 1.0.1 hosting on our hosting environment and we can make sure that it is working fine.