ASP.NET Core Overview

ASP.NET Core allows to build the following main kinds of applications:

• Razor Pages
• Web APIs

Both these application kinds use the ASP.NET Core MVC framework behind the scenes.

A common thing is the HttpContext object, which flows through the middleware containing all the infromation about the request, with potential additions from the middleware. The response is also added to the HttpContext object.

ActionResult

The following results can be returned from controllers:

• PageResult - HTML for a Razor Pages framework page
• ViewResult - HTML for an MVC framework controller
• RedirectToPageResult - returns 302
• RedirectResult - sends 302, but the target does not have to be a Razor Page
• FileResult - returns a file
• ContentResult - returns a provided string (not to be used with Razor Pages)
• StatusCodeResult - specified HTTP status code, optionally with some payload (not to be used with Razor Pages)
• NotFoundResult - 404

Some of the results have helper methods (such as Page() instead of return new PageResult());