February 10, 2025
Voiced by Polly

Immediately, I’m joyful to announce {that a} new open-source sample application, a fictitious used books eCommerce retailer we name Bob’s Used Books, is offered for .NET builders working with AWS. The .NET advocacy and improvement groups at AWS speak to prospects recurrently and, throughout these conversations, usually obtain requests for extra in-depth samples. Clients inform us that, whereas small code snippets serve properly as an example the mechanics of an API, their improvement groups additionally want and wish to make use of fuller, extra real-world samples to know higher the right way to assemble fashionable purposes for the cloud. Immediately’s pattern software launch is in response to these requests.

Bob’s Used Books is a pattern eCommerce software constructed utilizing ASP.NET Core model 6 and represents an preliminary modernization of a typical on-premises customized software. Representing a primary stage of modernization, the appliance makes use of fashionable cross-platform .NET, enabling it to run on each Home windows and Linux programs within the cloud. It’s typical of what many .NET builders are simply now going by, porting their very own purposes from .NET Framework to .NET utilizing freely out there instruments from AWS such because the Toolkit for .NET Refactoring and the Porting Assistant for .NET.

Bob's Used Books sample application homepage

Pattern software options
Clients of our fictional bookstore can browse and search on the shop for used books and think about particulars on chosen books reminiscent of worth, situation, style, and extra:

Bob's Used Books sample application search results page, which shows 8 books and their prices.

 

Bob's Used Books sample application book details page

Similar to an actual e-commerce retailer, prospects can add books to a procuring cart, pending subsequent checkout, or to a private want checklist. When the time involves buy, the shopper can begin the checkout course of, which can encourage them to sign up if they’re an current buyer or enroll through the course of.

Bob's Used Books sample application checkout page

On this pattern software, the bookstore’s employees makes use of the identical internet software to handle stock and buyer orders. Function-based authentication is used to find out whether or not it’s a employees member signing in, by which case they’ll view an administrative portal, or an everyday retailer buyer. For employees, having accessed the admin portal, they begin with a dashboard view that summarizes pending, in-process, or accomplished orders and the state of the shop’s stock:

Bob's Used Books sample application staff dashboard page

Workers can edit stock so as to add new books, full with cowl pictures, or modify inventory ranges. From the identical dashboard, employees can even view and course of pending orders.

Bob's Used Books sample application staff order processing page

Not proven right here, however one thing I believe is fairly cool, is a simulated workflow the place prospects can re-sell their books by the shop. This entails the shopper submitting an software, the shop admin evaluating and deciding whether or not to buy from the shopper, the shopper “posting” the guide to the shop if accepted, and eventually the admin including the guide into stock and reimbursing the shopper. Bear in mind, that is all fictional, nevertheless—no precise monetary transactions happen!

Utility structure
The bookstore pattern didn’t begin as a .NET Framework-based software that wanted porting to .NET, but it surely does use a monolithic MVC (model-view-controller) software design, typical of the .NET Framework improvement period (and nonetheless in use at present). It additionally makes use of a single Microsoft SQL Server database to include stock, procuring cart, consumer knowledge, and extra.

Bob's Used Books sample application outline architecture

When absolutely deployed to AWS, the appliance makes use of a number of providers. These present assets to host the appliance, present configuration to the working software, and in addition present helpful performance to the working code, reminiscent of picture verification:

  • Amazon Cognito – used for buyer and bookstore employees authentication. The appliance makes use of Cognito‘s Hosted UI to offer sign-in and sign-up performance.
  • Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) – manages a single Microsoft SQL Server Categorical occasion containing stock, buyer, and different typical knowledge for an e-commerce software.
  • Amazon Easy Storage Service (Amazon S3) – an S3 bucket is used to retailer cowl pictures for books.
  • AWS Programs Supervisor Parameter Retailer – accommodates runtime configuration knowledge, together with the identify of the S3 bucket for canopy pictures, and Cognito consumer pool particulars.
  • AWS Secrets and techniques Supervisor – holds the consumer and password particulars for the underlying SQL Server database in RDS.
  • Amazon CloudFront – offers a website for accessing the duvet pictures within the S3 bucket, which implies the bucket doesn’t have to be publicly out there.
  • Amazon Rekognition – used to confirm that cowl pictures uploaded for a guide don’t include objectionable content material.

The appliance is a place to begin to showcase additional modernization alternatives sooner or later, reminiscent of adopting purpose-built databases as a substitute of utilizing a single relational database, decomposing the monolith to make use of microservices (for the latter, AWS offers the Microservice Extractor for .NET), and extra. The .NET improvement, advocacy, and resolution architect groups right here at AWS are fairly excited on the alternatives for brand spanking new content material, utilizing this pattern, as an example these modernization alternatives within the upcoming months. And, because the pattern is open-source, we’re additionally to see the place the .NET improvement group takes it concerning modernization.

Operating the appliance
My colleague Brad Webber, a Options Architect at AWS, has written the primary in a sequence of technical weblog posts we’ll be publishing concerning the pattern. You’ll discover these on the brand new .NET on AWS weblog channel. In his first publish, you’ll be taught extra about the right way to run or debug the appliance by yourself machine in addition to deploy it utterly to the AWS cloud.

The appliance makes use of SQL Server Express localdb instance for its database wants when working exterior the cloud, which implies you do at the moment have to be utilizing a Home windows machine to run or debug. Launch profiles, accessible from Visible Studio, Visible Studio Code, or JetBrains Rider (all on Home windows), are used to pick how the appliance runs (for instance, with no or some cloud assets):

  • Native – When you choose this launch profile, the appliance runs utterly in your machine, utilizing no cloud assets, and doesn’t want an AWS account. This allows you to examine and experiment with the code incurring no prices for cloud assets.
  • Built-in – Whenever you use this profile, the appliance nonetheless runs domestically in your Home windows machine and continues to make use of the localdb database occasion, however now additionally makes use of some AWS assets, reminiscent of an S3 bucket, Rekognition, Cognito, and others. This profile allows you to learn the way you should use AWS providers inside your software code, utilizing the AWS SDK for .NET and numerous extension libraries that we distribute on NuGet (for a full checklist of all out there libraries you should use when creating your purposes, see the .NET on AWS repository on GitHub). To allow you to arrange the cloud assets wanted by the appliance when utilizing this profile, an AWS Cloud Improvement Equipment (AWS CDK) undertaking is offered within the pattern repository, making it simple to arrange and tear down these assets on demand.

Deploying the Pattern to AWS
You can too deploy the whole software to the AWS Cloud, on this case, to digital machines in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) with a SQL Server Categorical database occasion in Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). The deployment makes use of assets suitable with the AWS Free Tier however do be aware, nevertheless, that you could be nonetheless incur prices for those who exceed the Free Tier limits. Not like working the appliance by yourself machine, which requires Home windows due to the localdb dependency, you’ll be able to deploy the appliance to AWS from any machine, together with these working macOS and Linux. As soon as once more, a CDK undertaking is included within the repository to get you began, and Brad’s weblog publish goes into extra element on these steps so I gained’t repeat them right here.

Utilizing digital machines within the cloud is commonly a primary step in modernizing on-premises purposes due to similarity with an on-premises server setup, therefore the rationale for supporting Amazon EC2 deployments out-of-the-box. Sooner or later, we’ll be including content material exhibiting the right way to deploy the appliance to container providers on AWS, reminiscent of AWS App Runner, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).

Subsequent steps
The Bob’s Used Books sample application is available now on GitHub. We encourage you, for those who’re a .NET developer engaged on AWS and on the lookout for a deeper, extra real-world pattern, to clone the repository and take the appliance for a spin. We’re additionally interested in what modernization journeys you’d determine to take with the appliance, which can assist us create future content material for the pattern. Tell us within the issues section of the repository. And if you wish to contribute to the pattern, we welcome contributions!