Top 5 New features in ASP.NET 4.6

In this post we will take a look at some of the top features in the newest edition of ASP.net.

ASP.NET Core on Multiple Platforms

ASP.NET and the .NET framework are targeted towards the Windows platform. On the other hand, ASP.NET Core is developed to support multiple platforms including Windows, Mac, and Linux. ASP.NET Core is a part of .NET Core—a new modular framework that supports multiple platforms. This also means that, unlike ASP.NET web applications, primarily run under IIS, the ASP.NET Core applications can run under non-IIS Web servers. Figure 1 shows the role of the .NET Core and ASP.NET Core.

Role of Project.json

ASP.NET Core uses a special file Project.json for storing all the project-level configuration information. Project.config can store many configuration settings, such as references to NuGet packages used in the project and target frameworks.

Tag Helpers

In ASP.NET MVC 5, you used HTML helpers such as BeginForm(), LabelFor(), and TextBoxFor() to render forms and form fields. You can continue to use HTML helpers in ASP.NET Core, also. But there is a better alternative: Tag Helpers. Tag helpers take the form of standard HTML tags with certain special asp-* attributes added to them

View Components

In MVC 5, you used partial views as a means to reuse markup and code. ASP.NET Core introduces View Components—a more powerful and flexible alternative. A view component consists of a class typically inherited from ViewComponent base class and a view file containing the required markup. This programming model is quite similar to the one used by controllers and views. It allows you to separate code and markup from each other—code in the view component class and markup in a view. Once created, you can use a view component on a view by using the @Component.Invoke() method.

Single Programming Model for MVC and Web API

In MVC 5, controllers inherit from the System.Web.Mvc.Controller base class. And, Web API 2 controllers inherit from System.Web.Http.ApiController. In ASP.NET Core, both of these frameworks are merged into a single framework. Thus, under ASP.NET Core, an MVC controller and Web API controller both inherit from Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Controller base class. You then can configure aspects such as HTTP verb mapping and the routing of the controllers as desired.