Quick-start: ZptSharp & ASP.NET Core MVC
This guide is for users of .NET Core 2.0 or higher (including .NET 5+), using ASP.NET Core MVC. For .NET Framework, using ASP.NET MVC5, please follow the linked guide instead.
The following tutorial favours the use of the dotnet command-line tool, so as to avoid reliance upon Visual Studio.
Full IDEs will provide GUI alternatives to almost all of these steps, which you may use instead if you prefer.
Create a new MVC project
From a command-line, enter the following command.
dotnet new mvc -o MvcCoreSample
Add the ZptSharp NuGet packages
From a command-line, use the following two commands:
dotnet add MvcCoreSample\MvcCoreSample.csproj package ZptSharp.MvcCore
dotnet add MvcCoreSample\MvcCoreSample.csproj package ZptSharp.HtmlAgilityPack
This represents a minimal set of packages in order for an ASP.NET MVC application to serve HTML using ZptSharp.
Activate the view-engine
Add the following code to your Startup.cs ConfigureServices method.
This includes a small change to the usage of AddControllersWithViews(): adding the view options, which tell it to use the ZptSharp view engine.
Other existing content in that file should remain as-is.
var viewEngine = new ZptSharpViewEngine(builder => {
builder.AddStandardZptExpressions();
builder.AddHapZptDocuments();
});
services.AddControllersWithViews()
.AddViewOptions(opts => {
opts.ViewEngines.Insert(0, viewEngine);
});
Write your first view
Create a text file in the Views/Home directory named Index.pt.
Enter the following as the content for that file.
<html>
<head>
<title>ZptSharp 'Hello world' example for ASP.NET Core MVC</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Example ASP.NET Core MVC web app</h1>
<p tal:content="here/Message">The greeting message appears here.</p>
</body>
</html>
Write your controller action
The blank project should give you one controller already, named HomeController.
Rewrite the controller's Index action to the following:
public IActionResult Index()
{
return View(new { Message = "Hello world!" });
}
Start the app & see the result!
You should now be able to compile and run your application:
dotnet run --project MvcCoreSample\MvcCoreSample.csproj
You should see that your home page has the heading Example ASP.NET Core MVC web app and underneath is the text Hello world!. This "Hello World!" text came from the model supplied by the controller. The corresponding text in the view source file reading "The greeting message appears here." has been replaced.
There is a sample of what your application should look like available in the source files of the solution.
Continue learning in the tutorial
You have now completed the quick-start for ASP.NET Core MVC!
You have set-up a working MVC web application with views served by ZptSharp.
To continue learning about ZptSharp, please follow the ZptSharp tutorial, which teaches the ZPT language.
Throughout the tutorial, changes to the model are performed in the HomeController