How to include JavaScript sources in startup.cs of AspNetCore?

Question

Is there an easy way to reference JS sources from a JS project that has "JSProj/src/main.js" , "JSProj/package.json" to run at "AspNetCoreProj/startup.cs"?

So that when the asp is run, my controller from "AspNetCoreProj/Controllers/MyController.cs" binds to (launchSettings.json) "applicationUrl": "http://localhost:44709", "sslPort": 46367 AND the front-end JS App is run at, let's say, http://localhost:8080 at the same time?

So that I only need to run the asp app, not the two applications, including AspNetCoreProj and JSProj, separately.

I already installed node.js and run the JS app server using npm run build / npm run serve / yarn serve from command line, but I do not understand the concept of deploying the JavaScript sources (especially when it uses some framework like Angular) along with my ASP project, it just doesn't compile and/or run (that is to say: I'm very new to JS and its frameworks concept).

Do I really need to run a separate JS server for front-end or I can easily reference a JS project in a let's say, index.html / index.cshtml page?

edit: I need to know how to bind an asp.net core project with an angular (react.js / vue.js) project.

Answer 1

When a JS framework runs using serve, it will run on its own in-memory server like in angular a node.js server with its own port ,one option like you mentioned is to run manually both server and js framework, another option in ASP.NET Core is to "tell" the server to run the JS framework.

In any of this options (while developing) the JS framework will run from its own local server (in Angular a node.js) it is just that in second option the ASP.NET Core will do the serve for you, for this to happened you need to "tell" the asp core application what to do on startup, in order to do that in you need to configure startup.cs.

I think the best way is to open a new Angular project from template project in Visual Studio you can see all the settings that are needed, I will just mention that there are settings in 3 places: in startup.cs in ConfigureServices() and in Configure() as well as right click on the ASP.NET Core project => edit project there are some commands how to handle the Angular app when compiling as well some publish commands

Answer 2

In fact the problem was that an MVC (Web Controller app) project cannot be used to run JavaScript, It needs to be an "Angular" asp.net core web app or an asp.net core web app that's configured to use a single-page application (SPA) in startup.cs.