What's New in ASP.NET Core 8.0: Key Highlights

Introduction

ASP.NET Core 8.0 brings several significant changes and improvements that enhance the development experience for web applications. This version focuses on making Blazor a full-stack web UI framework, improving performance with Native AOT (Ahead-of-Time) compilation, enhancing minimal APIs, and introducing new features for SignalR, among other things. Here's a breakdown of the most important updates.

Blazor: A Full-Stack Web UI Framework

With the release of .NET 8, Blazor has evolved into a comprehensive full-stack web UI framework. It now supports various rendering modes, allowing developers to choose the best approach for their application needs.

• Static Server Rendering (SSR): Generates static HTML on the server, making it ideal for static content.
• Interactive Server Rendering (SSR): This method prerenders components on the server and activates them interactively on the client.
• Interactive WebAssembly Rendering: Renders components on the client using WebAssembly, with initial content prerendered on the server.
• Interactive Auto Rendering: Combines server-side and client-side rendering for the fastest app startup.

A new Blazor Web App template unifies these rendering models into a single starting point, simplifying the development process.

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• Top 20 Common .NET Core Interview Questions For Experienced
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• What are microservices?

Enhanced Navigation and Form Handling

.NET 8 introduces enhanced navigation and form handling in Blazor. Previously, static server-side rendering required a full page refresh when navigating or submitting forms. Now, Blazor can intercept these actions and handle them more efficiently by fetching the required content without refreshing the entire page. This improvement ensures smoother transitions and faster loading times.

Blazor Web App Template

A new Blazor Web App template has been introduced, consolidating the previously separate Blazor Server and Blazor WebAssembly templates. This template provides a unified starting point, combining the strengths of both hosting models with the new capabilities of Blazor in .NET 8. Developers can now create web applications with greater flexibility and efficiency.

Native AOT (Ahead-of-Time) Compilation

Native AOT is a new feature in ASP.NET Core 8.0 that improves application performance by compiling .NET code into native machine code ahead of time. This results in smaller app sizes, faster startup times, and reduced memory usage.

• Minimal APIs and gRPC Support: Native AOT is particularly beneficial for minimal APIs and gRPC apps, making them faster and more efficient.
• Library Compatibility: Some popular .NET libraries may need updates to fully support Native AOT due to their reliance on reflection and other dynamic features.

SignalR Enhancements

SignalR, the real-time communication library in ASP.NET Core, receives several enhancements in version 8.0:

• Stateful Reconnect: This new feature reduces perceived downtime during network disruptions by buffering data and replaying missed messages when the connection is restored.
• Improved Configuration: Configuring server timeouts and keep-alive intervals is now more straightforward, with a new API for both .NET and JavaScript clients.

Minimal APIs: More Features and Better Performance

Minimal APIs in ASP.NET Core 8.0 have been improved with new features and better performance, making them even more powerful for building lightweight web applications.

• Form Binding: Minimal APIs now support binding to form data, making handling forms in web applications easier.
• Antiforgery Token Validation: The new antiforgery middleware protects form submissions against cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks.
• Native AOT Compatibility: Minimal APIs are optimized for Native AOT, allowing them to be compiled into native machine code for improved performance.

New Blazor Features

Several new features have been added to Blazor in ASP.NET Core 8.0 to enhance its functionality and flexibility:

• Streaming Rendering: Blazor now supports streaming rendering, which allows content to be rendered and sent to the client as soon as it's ready. This improves the user experience by displaying the page layout quickly while other content loads.
• JS Initializers: New JavaScript initializers for Blazor Web Apps make it easier to customize the startup process and register custom event listeners.
• Enhanced Dependency Injection: Blazor now supports injecting keyed services using the [Inject] attribute, providing more granular control over dependency injection.

Security and Error Handling

ASP.NET Core 8.0 improves security and error handling, ensuring that web applications are more secure and robust.

• Antiforgery Support: By default, New anti-forgery features are included in forms, providing better protection against CSRF attacks.
• Error Pages: Blazor Web Apps can now define custom error pages rendered as static server components, to ensure they are always available.

Improvements to Project Templates and Tooling

The development experience has been further refined with updates to project templates and tooling:

• New Blazor Web App Template: A unified template that simplifies the creation of Blazor apps, combining the benefits of Blazor Server and Blazor WebAssembly.
• Tooling Enhancements: Visual Studio project templates for single-page applications (SPAs) have been updated to provide a better development experience.

Conclusion

ASP.NET Core 8.0 brings many new features and improvements that make building fast, efficient, and secure web applications easier. Whether you're using Blazor, SignalR, or minimal APIs, the enhancements in this version provide greater flexibility, better performance, and a more streamlined development experience.

If you want to take full advantage of these new features, now is the time to upgrade your applications to ASP.NET Core 8.0. With the new tools and capabilities at your disposal, you can create modern web applications that meet the demands of today's users.