Asp.NET Core Web API Exercise

This is a small coding exercise involving a simple Web API. It is intended to be used for training purposes and for technical interviews.

After reading through this introduction, see docs/Exercises.md for some programming tasks to complete.

Technologies

• ASP.NET Core
• Entity Framework Core - persistence of application data. This code uses SQLite as the data store to avoid the need for running extra services.
• AwesomeAssertions - extension methods for better .NET test readability
• AwesomeAssertions.Web - assertion extension methods for AwesomeAssertions for inspecting HTTP responses

Project Structure

This is a standard ASP.NET Core Web API application, but with three "layers" to separate concerns. A real project would probably put these layers into separate .NET projects, but for this exercise they are all in the same project.

Domain Folder

This contains the "domain model" for the application and defines the business objects. Each module (only one, Contacts, so far) has its own folder under Domain, with shared code in a Common folder. The Domain folder is intended to be the most stable part of the application, and should not change much over time. It should not reference any other part of the application code.

Web Folder

This contains the controllers and other code that is HTTP-specific. It references classes in the Domain folder, but nothing else. Each "feature" or section of the API has its own folder which contains the controller(s) and any other code specific to that feature.

Infrastructure Folder

This contains code that is specific to the infrastructure of the application. This includes things like database access, logging, and other things that are not specific to the Web API. For example, it contains the configuration for Entity Framework Core, which is used to access the database.

Setup

No external services are needed to run this code. As you build on top of it to add features, this will likely change.

Database Migrations

The dotnet-ef tool is used to create and run database migrations. Restore the required tools with:

dotnet tool restore

To get started and create the database, use a terminal or the Visual Studio Package Manager Console to run this command from the root of this repository:

dotnet ef database update --project src/ApiTraining

IF you need to add a new migration later, run this command from the root of this repository:

dotnet ef migrations add [NewMigrationName] --project src/ApiTraining

After creating a new migration, run the database update command above to refresh your database.

Running the Application

Run the application in debug mode, which should open your browser to the SwaggerUI interface, from the usual Visual Studio debug command.

You can also open the ApiTraining.http file in Visual Studio and run the requests from there.

A contact with the ID "019f42ee-b3e4-769e-b10c-449a47879567" has been seeded into the database - you can use it for manual testing.

Running Tests

Run tests from the Visual Studio Test Explorer (or the Test menu) or run dotnet test in your terminal.