This site is dedicated to helping developers who want to use the ASP.NET Razor Pages web development framework to build web applications.
What Is Razor Pages?
Introduced as part of ASP.NET Core, and now included in .NET 5, ASP.NET Razor Pages is a server-side, page-focused framework that enables building dynamic, data-driven web sites with clean separation of concerns. Part of the ASP.NET Core web development framework from Microsoft, Razor Pages supports cross platform development and can be deployed to Windows, Unix and Mac operating systems.
The Razor Pages framework is lightweight and very flexible. It provides the developer with full control over rendered HTML. Razor Pages is the recommended framework for cross-platform server-side HTML generation.
Razor Pages makes use of the popular C# programming language for server-side programming, and the easy-to-learn Razor templating syntax for embedding C# in HTML mark-up to generate content for browsers dynamically.
Architecturally, Razor Pages is an implementation of the MVC pattern and encourages separation of concerns.
Who should use Razor Pages?
Razor Pages is suitable for all kinds of developers from beginners to enterprise level. It is based on a page-centric development model, offering a familiarity to web developers with experience of other page-centric frameworks such as PHP, Classic ASP, Java Server Pages, ASP.NET Web Pages and ASP.NET Web Forms. It is also relatively easy for the beginner to learn, and it includes all of the advanced features of ASP.NET Core (such as dependency injection) making it just as suitable for large, scalable, team-based projects.
How to get Razor Pages
Razor Pages is included within .NET Core from version 2.0 onwards, which is available as a free download as either an SDK (Software Development Kit) or a Runtime. The SDK includes the runtime and command line tools for creating .NET Core applications. The SDK is installed for you when you install Visual Studio 2017 Update 3 or later. The runtime is used to run .NET Core applications. The Runtime-only installation is intended for use on machines where no development takes place.
Why should you use Razor Pages?
If you want a dynamic web site, that is one where the content is regularly being added to, you have a number of options available to you. You can use a Content Management System (CMS), of which there are many to choose from including WordPress, Umbraco, Joomla!, Drupal, Orchard CMS and so on. Or you can hire someone to build a suitable site for you. Or you can build your own if you have an interest in, and an aptitude for programming.
If you choose to build your own, you can choose from a wide range of programming languages and frameworks. If you are a beginner, you will probably want to start with a framework and language that is easy to learn, well supported and robust. If you are considering making a career as a programmer, you probably want to know that the skills you acquire while learning your new framework will enhance your value to potential employers. In both cases, learning C# as a language and ASP.NET Core as a framework will tick those boxes. If you are a seasoned developer, the Razor Pages framework is likely to add to your skillset with the minimum amount of effort.
What about the MVC Framework?
You can still choose to use ASP.NET Core MVC to build your ASP.NET Core web applications. If you are porting an existing .NET Framework MVC application (MVC5 or earlier) to .NET Core, it may well be quicker or easier to keep with the MVC framework. However, Razor Pages removes a lot of the unnecessary ceremony that comes with the ASP.NET implementation of MVC and is a simpler, and therefore more maintainable development experience.
The key difference between Razor Pages implementation of the MVC pattern and ASP.NET Core MVC is that Razor Pages uses the Page Controller pattern instead of the Front Controller pattern.
Razor Pages is the default for building server-side web applications in ASP.NET Core. Components within the underlying MVC framework still have their uses such as using controllers for building RESTful APIs.
