Getting Started with Blazor

Welcome to the Blazor learning path! Blazor is a free, open-source web framework for building interactive client-side web UIs with .NET. This tutorial will guide you through the initial steps to create your first Blazor application.

What is Blazor?

Blazor allows you to build web UIs using C# and .NET instead of JavaScript. It supports two main hosting models:

Blazor Server: Runs your app entirely on the server, sending UI updates over SignalR.
Blazor WebAssembly: Runs your app directly in the browser using WebAssembly.

This guide will focus on getting you started with Blazor using the recommended Blazor WebAssembly model for a client-side experience.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed:

.NET 6 SDK or later: You can download it from the official .NET website.
A code editor: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code with the C# Dev Kit, or JetBrains Rider are recommended.

Creating Your First Blazor App

Let's create a new Blazor WebAssembly project. Open your terminal or command prompt and navigate to the directory where you want to create your project. Then, run the following .NET CLI command:

dotnet new blazorwasm -o MyBlazorApp

This command will create a new directory named MyBlazorApp containing the structure of a basic Blazor WebAssembly application.

Running Your Blazor App

Navigate into your new project directory and run the application:

cd MyBlazorApp
dotnet run

Your browser should automatically open to https://localhost:xxxx (where xxxx is a port number). You'll see the default Blazor template application, which includes a counter and a fetch data page.

Understanding the Project Structure

Here's a quick overview of the key files and folders in your project:

Pages/: Contains the Razor components that define the different pages of your application.
Shared/: Contains reusable components, such as the navigation menu and layout.
wwwroot/: Contains static assets like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
_Imports.razor: Imports common namespaces for all Razor files in the project.
Program.cs: The entry point of your Blazor WebAssembly application.
MyBlazorApp.csproj: The project file.

Important: Blazor components are typically written in Razor files (.razor), which combine HTML markup with C# code.

Next Steps

Congratulations! You've successfully created and run your first Blazor application. Now you're ready to dive deeper:

Explore the code in Pages/Counter.razor and Pages/FetchData.razor to see how components work.
Learn about creating your own Blazor components.
Understand data binding and event handling.