Getting Started

This tutorial explains how to create a new web application using the application startup template.

This document assumes that you prefer to use MVC / Razor Pages as the UI framework and Entity Framework Core as the database provider. For other options, please change the preference on top of this document.

Setup Your Development Environment

First things first! Let's setup your development environment before creating the first project.

Pre-Requirements

The following tools should be installed on your development machine:

Visual Studio 2019 for Windows / Visual Studio for Mac. ¹
.NET Core 3.1+
Node v12 or v14
Yarn v1.20+ (not v2) ² or npm v6+ (already installed with Node)

¹ You can use another editor instead of Visual Studio as long as it supports .NET Core and ASP.NET Core. ^↩

² Yarn v2 works differently and is not supported. ^↩

Install the ABP CLI

ABP CLI is a command line interface that is used to automate some common tasks for ABP based solutions.

ABP CLI is a free & open source tool for the ABP framework.

First, you need to install the ABP CLI using the following command:

dotnet tool install -g Volo.Abp.Cli

If you've already installed, you can update it using the following command:

dotnet tool update -g Volo.Abp.Cli

Create a New Project

Use the new command of the ABP CLI to create a new project:

abp new Acme.BookStore

You can use different level of namespaces; e.g. BookStore, Acme.BookStore or Acme.Retail.BookStore.

Alternatively, you can select the "Direct Download" tab from the ABP Framework web site to create a new solution.

ABP CLI Commands & Options

ABP CLI document covers all of the available commands and options for the ABP CLI. This document uses the application startup template to create a new web application. See the ABP Startup Templates document for other templates.

The Solution Structure

The solution has a layered structure (based on the Domain Driven Design) and contains unit & integration test projects. See the application template document to understand the solution structure in details.

Create the Database

Connection String

Check the connection string in the appsettings.json file under the .Web project

"ConnectionStrings": {
  "Default": "Server=localhost;Database=BookStore;Trusted_Connection=True"
}

The solution is configured to use Entity Framework Core with MS SQL Server by default. EF Core supports various database providers, so you can use any supported DBMS. See the Entity Framework integration document to learn how to switch to another DBMS.

Apply the Migrations

The solution uses the Entity Framework Core Code First Migrations. So, you need to apply migrations to create the database. There are two ways of applying the database migrations.

Apply Migrations Using the DbMigrator

The solution comes with a .DbMigrator console application which applies migrations and also seeds the initial data. It is useful on development as well as on production environment.

.DbMigrator project has its own appsettings.json. So, if you have changed the connection string above, you should also change this one.

Right click to the .DbMigrator project and select Set as StartUp Project

Hit F5 (or Ctrl+F5) to run the application. It will have an output like shown below:

Initial seed data creates the admin user in the database (with the password is 1q2w3E*) which is then used to login to the application. So, you need to use .DbMigrator at least once for a new database.

Using EF Core Update-Database Command

Ef Core has Update-Database command which creates database if necessary and applies pending migrations.

Right click to the .Web project and select Set as StartUp project:

Open the Package Manager Console, select .EntityFrameworkCore.DbMigrations project as the Default Project and run the Update-Database command:

This will create a new database based on the configured connection string.

Using the .DbMigrator tool is the suggested way, because it also seeds the initial data to be able to properly run the web application.

If you just use the Update-Database command, you will have an empty database, so you can not login to the application since there is no initial admin user in the database. You can use the Update-Database command in development time when you don't need to seed the database. However, using the .DbMigrator application is easier and you can always use it to migrate the schema and seed the database.

Run the Application

Ensure that the .Web project is the startup project. Run the application which will open the login page in your browser:

Use Ctrl+F5 in Visual Studio (instead of F5) to run the application without debugging. If you don't have a debug purpose, this will be faster.

Enter admin as the username and 1q2w3E* as the password to login to the application. The application is up and running. You can start developing your application based on this startup template.

Mobile Development

If you want to include a React Native project in your solution, add -m react-native (or --mobile react-native) argument to project creation command. This is a basic React Native startup template to develop mobile applications integrated to your ABP based backends.

See the Getting Started with the React Native document to learn how to configure and run the React Native application.

Web Application Development Tutorial