.Net Core Support

[aabenoja]

I have a side project using ASP .Net Core, and I'm looking to use spark rather than razor for my custom middleware stack. I haven't started looking into the steps to start porting this over, so I don't know how involved the process would be, or if there would be enough support for this.

[RobertTheGrey]

I'm currently waiting for dotnetcore to settle down for I do anything with this. If you are happy to do the work then that's great, but with all the changes recently, I'm expecting there may be more before the RC goes RTW

[aabenoja]

I thought it had already settled down with the 1.0.0 announcement?

[RobertTheGrey]

Yes, you're right the core is at v1 but the tooling is still in preview and a bunch of the supporting Nugets are still not at v1. I'm concerned I spent time on it just to have to change things again, but if you're in the mood to check it out, take a look at this and let me know your thoughts. If you're keen to spend time on it, I won't stop you 👍

[aabenoja]

Cool, didn't notice the tooling was still in preview. Good to know. I'll take a stab at it, see where I get.

[RainingNight]

Any new message?

[RobertTheGrey]

Currently working on a port of the code to .Net Core 2. Won't be supporting original .Net Core, and I'd say the port is currently about 50% done removing dependencies on System.Web being the tricky part.

[bounav]

@RobertTheGrey how are things going on the .net core front?

Anything the community could do to help?

[RobertTheGrey]

Was going strong in Feb, but March was full of holidays, so I'll be getting back into it again now in April - feel like it's about 70% there, so hopefully have something out to test in coming weeks

[bounav]

@RobertTheGrey how are things progressing?

We're eager to port some of our website to .net core and spark view engine is the last dependency holding us back!
Going back to razor view engine would be such a sad thing to do ;).

I'll re-iterate my offer to help: Are there any bits the community could do to assist?

[RobertTheGrey]

Hey @bounav - thanks for the nudge! I completely stalled on this due to work pressure at the back end of last year. I still have a couple of work projects on the go now that are time-sensitive for the next month or two, so it's tricky to know when I'm going to get time to sit down and look at this.

Plus with the whole Blazor thing, I didn't really think anyone was waiting on this to be fair, so I haven't been pushing myself to get through it. But it does seem a shame to leave it incomplete, especially when it can benefit production systems.

If you drop me an email, I can send you my mobile (UK) and we can talk about the features you're using in your code base as some were more difficult to port than others when I was in the thick of it, and we can see what the best approach may be. If there's something you can do to get it production ready, then we'll do that, and at least you're not stuck waiting for me to get some free time.

Cheers!

[bounav]

Really nice chatting with you over the phone!

As discussed we use the following Spark features:

• In ASP.NET 5 (at the moment) we configure SparkViewEngine so that we don't have to write Razor (.cshtml) views

• Our .spark views make use of

  • Partial views
  • 3 pass rendering

The list above represents, at least for to me and my team, the minimum feature set for a first attempt at getting spark to work in .NET core.

We also talked about the more advanced spark features (E.g. bindings and the use of other programming languages)... but this should probably be ported/extended at a later point?

One of the thing's I'll try to do in the coming weeks is to generate a small ASP.NET Core test project that includes a couple of Razor page that mimics a "real" use case.
It's going to be just a few views, nothing else but that should help testing and getting the ball rolling.

[RobertTheGrey]

Thanks @bounav - yes great chat thanks. I'll look out for the stuff we talked through and if I make some progress I'll be sure to post it here.

[mikernet]

For what it's worth, this was a great view engine with tidy syntax that I much preferred over Razor. A bit sad it hasn't been updated so I can't use it but if a new version ever gets released that works with .NET Core / .NET 5, I'd love to start using it again :)

[neilrees]

Can I ask what the current state of this repository is? @bounav Has done a load of good work to update the project and add .NET Core targets - is it in a position where a new release could be made?

[bounav]

All I did last year was tidying up the projects. Although some of the code now targets .net core I haven't added any new functionality per say, it's probably not worth releasing a new version.

What is left to do is the complicated bit: How to implement IViewEngine in an ASP.NET Core context...

[bounav]

@neilrees watch PR #79 !

[neilrees]

With #79 having been merged 🎉 , is there likely to be a new release?

[bounav]

Yes, I need to find the time to work on the deployment pipeline. Once sorted out we're thinking of release a new pre-release version of spark, both for MVC targeting .net framework and aspnetcore.

[neilrees]

@bounav Is there anything we can do help put a build together?