Aspire Cafe - A hands-on template for Aspire and ASP.NET Core

Let’s face it—building modern cloud-native apps can feel like juggling flaming swords while riding a unicycle. That’s where architect4hire.com comes in. Whether knee-deep in code or mapping out the next big system architecture, Architect4Hire offers guidance, patterns, and real-world examples to help you get there faster (with fewer headaches).

Our Aspire Café project, built with .NET Aspire and ASP.NET Core, is like a hands-on blueprint for developers who want to learn by doing. It takes all those best practices we hear about—like clean architecture, microservices, and containerized deployments—and shows them in action. So if you want to level up your cloud-native game, Architect4Hire’s got your back.

Make sure to bookmark the git repo at https://github.com/architect4hire/aspirecafe

☕ Microservices: The Café's Backbone

The Aspire Café solution exemplifies a microservices architecture, where each service is dedicated to a specific business function:

  • Product API: Manages the product catalog and inventory.
  • Counter API: Handles order processing and payments.
  • Kitchen API: Manages food preparation workflows.
  • Barista API: Handles beverage preparation workflows.
  • Order Summary API: Aggregates order information across services.

Each service adheres to the Single Responsibility Principle, allowing for independent development, deployment, and scaling. This modularity enhances fault isolation and facilitates targeted updates.

🔧 .NET Aspire Application Host: Orchestrating the Services

At the heart of the solution is the Aspire Application Host, which orchestrates the various services and infrastructure components. It simplifies the management of distributed applications by handling:

  • Service registration and dependencies: Automatically wires up services and their dependencies.
  • Infrastructure provisioning: Manages resources like databases, caches, and message brokers.
  • Service discovery and configuration: Facilitates service communication through automatic discovery and configuration.

This orchestration enhances the local development experience by simplifying the management of the application's configuration and interconnections.

🏗️ Infrastructure Components: Building Blocks of the Café

The solution leverages several cloud-native services, managed through Aspire:

  • Azure Cosmos DB: A NoSQL database for storing product and order information. The .NET Aspire integration enables seamless connection to existing Cosmos DB instances or creation of new ones.
  • Redis Cache: Provides distributed caching for improved performance. Aspire's integration allows for easy setup and management of Redis instances.
  • Azure Service Bus: Acts as a message broker for asynchronous communication between services. Aspire simplifies the integration with Azure Service Bus.
  • Azure Key Vault: Securely stores credentials and secrets. The solution uses an emulator for development purposes.

Each component is containerized for local development, ensuring consistency across environments.

🧱 Design Patterns and Practices: Structuring the Codebase

The solution employs several design patterns to enhance maintainability and testability:

Layered (Onion Style) Architecture

Each microservice implements a clean layered architecture:

  • API Layer: Controllers handling HTTP requests.
  • Facade Layer: Orchestrates business logic and validation.
  • Business Layer: Implements core business rules.
  • Data Layer: Manages data access and persistence.

This separation of concerns improves maintainability and testability.

Facade Pattern

The facade pattern provides a simplified interface to complex subsystems, decoupling the client (controller) from the implementation details of the business logic. This pattern enhances code readability and maintainability.

Result Pattern

A custom Result<T> type is used to handle operation outcomes consistently, avoiding exception-based flow control and providing clear error information.

Validation Pattern

FluentValidation is employed for model validation, separating validation rules from the models. This ensures robust input validation before business operations.

📚 API Documentation: Clear and Comprehensive

The controllers utilize XML documentation and ProducesResponseType attributes to generate comprehensive API documentation. This approach integrates well with OpenAPI and tools like Scalar.net, providing developers with explicit and interactive API references.

🚀 Modern C# and .NET Features: Leveraging the Latest

The solution takes advantage of the latest features in C# 13 and .NET 9:

  • Async/await patterns: Facilitate non-blocking operations.
  • Pattern matching: Enhances code clarity and conciseness.
  • Extension methods: Promote cleaner code organization.
  • Middleware: Handles cross-cutting concerns like exception handling.

These features contribute to a modern, efficient, and maintainable codebase.

☁️ Simply Put A Robust Foundation for Cloud-Native Applications

The Aspire Café solution demonstrates how modern .NET applications can be built using a microservices architecture with the .NET Aspire stack. The application achieves scalability and maintainability by leveraging clean design patterns, cloud-native infrastructure, and the latest language features.

This architecture provides a solid foundation for building complex, distributed systems that can evolve independently while working together seamlessly.

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