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GitHub Project Provides 300-Plus Samples of ASP.NET Core/Blazor Fundamentals

A GitHub project providing more than 300 code samples to illustrate ASP.NET Core fundamentals has amassed more than 4,100 stars.

The dodyg/practical-aspnetcore project comes from Dody Gunawinata, with the title "306 samples for ASP.NET Core 2.1, 2.2, 3.0 and 3.1 fundamentals."

The project got a boost when Microsoft's Scott Hanselman highlighted it in a blog post earlier this month.

"He has lots of small compartmentalized samples that show you everything from Hello World (with increasingly complex and interesting bits layered on top) to lower level samples around WebSockets and building URIs," Hanselman said of the project.

The repo is heavy on .NET Core 2.1 samples, but samples for the latest (and long-term support) .NET Core 3.1 are a "work in progress" in an "active branch" of the repo for converting the samples to v3.1. Called "Samples for ASP.NET Core 3.1 (WIP)," it was last updated three days ago (Feb. 24).

The popularity of the project and similar ones speak to the traction gained by Microsoft's open-source, cross-platform "Core" initiative that succeeds the aging, Windows-only .NET Framework. The ASP.NET Core side of things for web development is especially active, propelled by the popularity of Blazor, which lets .NET developers use C# in web development (both client- and server-side).

[Click on image for larger view.] ASP.NET Core Fundamentals Samples

And, indeed, the ASP.NET Core 3.1 work-in-progress branch already sports sections on Blazor Client Side (Web Assembly) and Blazor Server Side. Checking out the former reveals 18 offerings for the WebAssembly-based client-side effort, ranging from a Hello World incremental counter app ("The smallest Blazor app you can create") to Date Binding - EditForm ("Show an example of EditForm and its 6 input controls, including form validation").

"The goal of this project is to enable .NET programmers to learn the new ASP.NET Core stack from the ground up directly from code. There is so much power in the underlying ASP.NET Core stack. Don't miss them!" says the readme for the project headed by Gunawinata, who lurks on the DotNetStudyGroup/aspnetcore Gitter channel to help out with ASP.NET Core issues.

Gunawinata recommends using Visual Studio Code to play around with the samples, but Visual Studio 2019 works as well.

Hanselman also invited his readers to contribute to the open source project. "I know Dody would appreciate the help and this is a great way for you to get involved in open source AND learn a little about ASP.NET. Check out the Contributor Guidelines! As they say, 'There is no sample that is too small!'"

Hanselman has been actively promoting training materials, having last fall called attention to a months-long project to provide entry-level instructional videos on all things .NET. That call-out was duplicated soon after by James Montemagno, who touted counterpart Xamarin videos, with some Python thrown in.