Aspire Chat Demo

A modern, real-time chat application built with .NET Aspire and Azure, designed to demonstrate cloud-native application development patterns. This project is part of a blog series exploring how to leverage .NET Aspire with Azure services.

🌟 Overview

This chat application showcases the power of .NET Aspire to simplify building distributed, cloud-native applications. It demonstrates how to integrate various Azure services with a modern .NET stack to create a scalable, resilient real-time application.

🏗️ Architecture

The application follows a microservices-inspired architecture with:

• API Backend: FastEndpoints-based API handling chat messages and user data
• Web Frontend: Blazor Server application providing the user interface
• Infrastructure: Redis for caching and pub/sub, SQL Server for data persistence, and Azure Storage for file attachments

Aspire Dashboard

Dependency Graph

Application

🛠️ Technologies

• .NET Aspire: Cloud-ready stack for building observable, production-ready distributed applications
• FastEndpoints: High-performance API framework that promotes REPR pattern (Request-Endpoint-Response)
• Blazor Server: Interactive web UI framework using C# instead of JavaScript
• Entity Framework Core: ORM for data access and database operations
• Redis: In-memory data store for caching and pub/sub messaging
• Azure SQL Database: Managed relational database service
• Azure Blob Storage: Scalable object storage for images and file attachments
• Azure Container Apps: Hosting environment for containerized applications

📊 Project Structure

• AspireChat.AppHost: Orchestrates all services and infrastructure components
• AspireChat.Api: Backend API service using FastEndpoints
• AspireChat.Web: Blazor Server frontend application
• AspireChat.ServiceDefaults: Shared service configuration and defaults

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• .NET 9 SDK
• Docker Desktop
• Jetbrains Rider, Visual Studio 2022 or later / VS Code with C# Dev Kit
• Aspire Cli
• Azure subscription (for deployment)

Local Development

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/aspire-chat-demo.git
   cd aspire-chat-demo
   

2. Install the Aspire Cli

   dotnet tool install --global aspire.cli --prerelease
   

3. Run the application with Aspire dashboard:

   cd AspireChat/AspireChat.AppHost
   aspire run
   

4. Navigate to the Aspire dashboard to view and manage your services

Deployment to Azure

The blog series will cover step-by-step deployment to Azure using:

• Azure Container Apps for hosting services
• Azure SQL Database for data persistence
• Azure Cache for Redis
• Azure Blob Storage for file storage

📝 Blog Series

This Project is the foundation for several blog posts. The series will cover the following topics:

• Getting started with .NET Aspire
• Building a real-time chat application with Blazor and FastEndpoints
• Integrating Azure services with .NET Aspire

Stay tuned for links to each blog post as they are published!

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgements

• Microsoft .NET team for Aspire
• The FastEndpoints and Blazor teams
• All contributors and the .NET community