Microsoft is a pioneer of the IT industry and is known for constantly changing and evolving with time to make things easier and a lot more productive. Taking a step further in the evolutions of one of their web frameworks, Asp.Net Core, Microsoft announced the public release of Asp.Net Core 2.0 in August 2017.

This marked the first step of Microsoft’s cross platform framework into becoming a more mature and intuitive framework. To start building applications with Asp.Net Core 2.0, you will need Microsoft Visual Studio 2017, .Net Core 2.0 and of course Asp.Net Core 2.0, all of which are easily available on their official websites.

Before we move on to see the new features of Asp.Net Core 2.0, let’s have a brief look at what it is first.

What is Asp.Net Core 2.0?

Asp.Net Core is an open source web framework, developed by Microsoft and a community of developers, that is a combination of Asp.Net MVC and Asp.Net Web API frameworks into a single model. Asp.Net Core 2.0 is the second version of the Asp.Net Core web framework.

The framework runs on both .Net Framework and .Net Core. Asp.Net Core can be used to build applications on Windows, macOS or even Linux. It has a cloud ready environment-based configuration system and a unified tool to build web UI and Web API. This is why the framework is often preferred by developers to build cross-platform cloud based web applications.

Now that we have an idea about Asp.Net Core 2.0, let’s take a look at some of the best improvements of it.

The Best Features of Asp.Net Core 2.0:

1. Meta Packages: The meta package feature is the one that brings in all the asp.dot net core packages into one single folder. This means that you don’t have to worry about trying to find out which specific package do you need to use to run a particular feature. Everything is already available for use. Apart from this, another plus side of it is the fact that everything is in a single version now. So you don’t even have to worry about different packages from different version causing any compatibility issues.

2. Runtime Store: Asp.Net Core 2.0 introduced a new feature in an attempt to make applications built with it much smaller. This feature is the runtime store feature in .Net Core 2.0, which includes all the binaries of Asp.Net core. These binaries are all set and ready to use without any further changes required. This means that the app doesn’t have to bring in the binaries as they are already there which therefore make your app smaller.

3. Web host Builder: Another feature has been introduced in the framework to simplify the hosting. The Asp.net Core 2.0 hosting is set up within the app using a much simpler code. In the previous version you would have to write some code to set up your host, then write some more to set up the HTTP server you’ll be using, your content route, to enable IAS integration etc. The default web host builder feature in Asp.Net Core 2.0 does all of that for you. This means
that your hosting will be all set up with a simple line of code.

4. Razor Pages: Razor pages are a page first structure that make page-focused scenarios easier and more productive.Razor pages are similar to the MVC architecture but more object oriented with all the page’s code in one single file (unlike in MVC). This allows developers to create more dynamic web pages easily with just a code for the View. Routing is also easier with Razor pages as the URL structure of the app created represents the location of the page in the filesystem. The code can however also be split up in code behind files if required giving you the flexibility to create the program as suitable.

5. Updated Libraries: Microsoft also updated their libraries for Asp.Net Core 2.0 for configuration, logging, authentication and identity to making a range of functions easier to use and debug. Apart from this, SPA Support also extends to JavaScript libraries and frameworks which means that Asp.Net core 2.0 also supports Angular, React, React-redux, Knockout, Vue and Aurelia.

So these were just a few of the best features that were introduced in Asp.Net core 2.0. It is definitely a major improvement over the previous version with an extended variety of features and a decreased amount of coding needed. Asp.Net Core 2.0 is definitely a framework you want to work with if you’re looking to build a new application.