Do you use .NET Aspire to simplify cloud-native development?

Building cloud-native applications can be challenging due to their complexity and the need for scalability, resilience, and manageability.

There are lots of ways to build cloud-native applications and the overwhelming number of choices can make it difficult to know where to start.

Figure: Too many lego pieces - Where do you start?

Also, the complexity of modern cloud-native applications can make them difficult to manage and maintain.

.NET Aspire is a powerful set of tools, templates, and integrations designed to streamline cloud-native app development with .NET. It offers a consistent approach to orchestration, standardized integrations, and developer-friendly tooling to help you build robust, production-ready applications.

Figure: Aspire makes common time-consuming developer chores a breeze

.NET Aspire addresses common pain points in cloud-native development:

Orchestration

.NET Aspire helps you manage interconnected services and resources in your application by:

• Automatically setting up service discovery and environment variables
• Providing tools to spin up local containers and configure dependencies
• Simplifying complex setups with clear abstractions, reducing the need for low-level configuration

Integrations

.NET Aspire integrations make it easy to connect to essential services:

• NuGet packages like AddRedis or AddAzureServiceBusClient streamline configuration and health checks
• Standardized interfaces reduce boilerplate code and ensure seamless connectivity

Tooling and Templates

Leverage predefined templates and tooling to:

• Generate projects with common configurations like health checks and telemetry
• Save time with opinionated defaults for service discovery, logging, and monitoring
• Kickstart new projects or integrate Aspire into existing .NET apps

Example - Adding Redis Cache to a .NET Core app

The old way - with Docker Compose

1. Manually set up a Redis container (e.g., using Docker Compose).

version: '3.9'

services:
  redis:
    image: redis:latest
    container_name: redis-cache
    ports:
      - "6379:6379"
    environment:
      REDIS_PASSWORD: examplepassword # Optional, for enabling authentication
    command: ["redis-server", "--requirepass", "examplepassword"] # Optional, for setting up a password
    volumes:
      - redis_data:/data # Persist data locally

volumes:
  redis_data:
    driver: local

1. Write custom code to handle connection strings and inject them into your application (this needs to be manually kept in sync with all your environments)

var redisConnection = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("REDIS_CONNECTION_STRING") ?? "localhost:6379";
services.AddStackExchangeRedisCache(options =>
{
    options.Configuration = redisConnection;
    options.InstanceName = "SampleInstance";
});

❌ Figure: Bad Example - Manually setting up Redis cache 🥱

The new way - with .NET Aspire

Aspire handles Redis setup and connection string injection for you:

1. Configure your Aspire application and pass a reference to Redis Cache

var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
var cache = builder.AddRedis("cache");
builder.AddProject<Projects.MyApp>("app")
      .WithReference(cache)
      .WaitFor(cache);

1. Add the client integration for Redis

public static class DependencyInjection
{
    public static void AddInfrastructure(this IHostApplicationBuilder builder)
    {
        builder.AddRedisClient("my-redis-connection-string");
    }
}

✅ Figure: Good Example - Simple Redis setup with .NET Aspire 🚀

No need to write Docker Compose files. No need for yaml 🤮. Connection string is automatically injected.

Get started with Aspire

Check out Microsoft's docs.