1.1: Setting Up Dev Environment

Visual Studio Code

ASP.NET Core applications can be developed in Visual Studio, similarly to an MVC 5 project. However, to demonstrate the new addition of the CLI, we will use the Visual Studio Code text editor in this tutorial, although any text editor will suffice.

If you do not have it installed - download Visual Studio Code.

.NET Core SDK

If you do not have it installed, download the .NET Core SDK.

Check that it is installed correctly by typing this into your command line:

dotnet --info

This should return the information about the version of the SDK, the runtime environment, and the .NET Core version.

.NET Command Line Tools (2.1.4)

Product Information:
 Version:            2.1.4
 Commit SHA-1 hash:  5e8add2190

Runtime Environment:
 OS Name:     Windows
 OS Version:  10.0.16299
 OS Platform: Windows
 RID:         win10-x64
 Base Path:   C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.1.4\

Microsoft .NET Core Shared Framework Host

  Version  : 2.0.5
  Build    : 17373eb129b3b05aa18ece963f8795d65ef8ea54

If you encountered an error - you either installed it incorrectly, or it did not get added to your environment variables. See solution here.

SQL Server Management Studio

If you're working in Visual Studio, this is optional. If you are working on a Mac or Linux, or you don't want to install SQL Server Management Studio - try the VS Code mssql extension.

Download and install SQL Server Management Studio

Postman

Install Postman for testing our API

Install Extensions

These are optional, but highly recommended VS Code extensions for ASP.NET development.

1. C# by Microsoft

2. C# Extensions by jchannon

3. NuGet Package Manager by jmrog

There are many more extensions to explore based on your preferences or needs - but, these are the most essential.