With ASP.NET, there is already a very good, scalable solution to develop and host web applications and services based on the .NET framework. But as of 2022, it seems that there are not that many other web development frameworks and servers left besides Microsoft's ASP.NET. This project aims to bring more diversity to the beautiful ecosystem of .NET development, also in the spirit of the open source community. If you are familiar with the ASP.NET APIs, you may want to have a look at the comparison sheet here.
With the GenHTTP framework, developers should be able to easily develop new web applications in a short time. Everything else is provided by the server infrastructure as well as the excellent ecosystem of .NET which easily allows to build, test, and run applications.
NOTE If you directly want to start with a more complex app such as a website or webservice, have a look at our project templates.
To create our first application using the GenHTTP framework from scratch, open a terminal and enter the following command to create a new .NET 6 application:
dotnet new console --framework net6.0 -o Project
This will create a new folder Project. Within this folder, run the following
command to add a nuget package reference to the GenHTTP Core
nuget package:
cd Project
dotnet add package GenHTTP.Core
You can then edit the generated Program.cs to setup a simple project using the GenHTTP server API:
using GenHTTP.Engine;
using GenHTTP.Modules.IO;
using GenHTTP.Modules.Practices;
var content = Content.From(Resource.FromString("Hello World!"));
return Host.Create()
.Console()
.Defaults()
.Handler(content)
.Run();
To run our newly created project, simply execute:
dotnet run
This will host a new server instance on port 8080, allowing you to view the newly created project in your browser by navigating to http://localhost:8080.
The example project above gives you a basic idea on how projects developed with the GenHTTP may look like. To create more complex web applications (such as websites or webservices), follow the guides in the following sections: