Setting Up Your First ASP.NET Core Web API Project

Advanced Updated June 17, 2025

📦 Setting Up Your First ASP.NET Core Web API Project

Let’s walk through the process of scaffolding and configuring a basic API.

🛠️ Prerequisites

  • .NET 8 SDK
  • IDE (Visual Studio 2022+, VS Code, or Rider)
  • Command-line terminal

✅ Creating the Project

Run the following command to create a new Web API project:

dotnet new webapi -n ProductCatalogApi
cd ProductCatalogApi

This scaffolds a minimal API project with basic controller setup, dependency injection, and OpenAPI (Swagger) enabled.

📁 Project Structure Overview

ProductCatalogApi/
│
├── Controllers/
│   └── WeatherForecastController.cs
├── Program.cs
├── appsettings.json
└── ProductCatalogApi.csproj