Speaker: Steve Gordon

Level: 300

Have you ever wondered how a browser/client request actually results in a response from ASP.NET Core? Have you ever been constrained by the default behaviour of ASP.NET Core and wanted to change how it works? If so, then this talk is for you.

In this session, Steve will explore the lifecycle of incoming requests in ASP.NET Core, touring through the layers from Kestrel, to hosting, to middleware and then on into MVC itself. You’ll see how the pieces all fit together and learn about the places where you can inject your own implementations to customise, augment and override the ASP.NET Core defaults.

Steve will show the hidden extension points that can take you to power-user levels when building your ASP.NET Core applications, such as applying custom conventions, filters and model binding behaviour. You’ll leave this talk with ideas for improving your ASP.NET Core applications and reducing code by refactoring cross-cutting concerns.

Don’t fight the framework, customise it!
Notes and comments

In this session, I provide an in-depth look at how ASP.NET Core processes HTTP requests. I’ll describe the flow through the application host, the Kestrel webserver, middleware and finally through MVC. The intent is to use this narrative to explain some advanced features of ASP.NET Core which support customising its behaviour.

Key take-aways:
– How application hosting works
– How Kestrel receives requests from the network Socket and parses them
– How the middleware pipeline can be used to respond to requests
– How endpoint routing works
– How filters can be used to intercept and modify requests within MVC
– How MVC finally handles a request.

This session is aimed at ASP.NET Core developers of intermediate experience. I have deeply investigated the internals of ASP.NET Core when writing posts for my blog (stevejgordon.co.uk) which is highly viewed as a valuable resource for developers.