Is live reload with in-process aspnet core 3 possible?

Question

I recently upgraded an .Net Framwork AspNet MVC app to a AspNet Core 3 MVC app and I'd like the ability to change a view, save, and refresh my browser window to see the changes. Now it appears I have to do a build every time before I can see any changes. Is there a way to change this behavior?

This is being hosted under IIS 10

Clamshell

Answer 1

As far as I know, the runtime compilation could just work in the develop environment. That means you couldn't use it in the production environment(which is hosted on the IIS).

If you change the visual studio's debug environment to IIS, it will stil work.

Besides, RuntimeCompilation is not a build-in feature in the asp.net core 3.0.

If you want to use it, I suggest you could try to install the package Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation and then configure AddRazorRuntimeCompilation in Startup.cs like

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.AddControllersWithViews().AddRazorRuntimeCompilation();
}

Ceramist

This was it! Thanks Brando! – Clamshell

Works for MVC as well. – Suellensuelo

Worked as expecting. Thank you – Garibull

Like a charm, thank you! – Honorific

An important note... when I use Hot Reload with IIS, I have to manually refresh the browser after the Hot Reload, where IIS Express refreshes automatically. – Parodist

With dotnet 3.1 you'll additionally need to add <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation" Version="3.1.3" /> to your csproj. – Spearhead

Answer 2

There is a new way of doing this for 3.1, taken from: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/mvc/views/view-compilation?view=aspnetcore-3.1

Add the package at csproj

<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation" Version="3.1.3" />

Then at launch.json, add a new environment variable

"ASPNETCORE_HOSTINGSTARTUPASSEMBLIES": "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation"

Druid

Answer 3

I was very happy to implement Westwind.AspnetCore.LiveReload per this blog post. It was quite easy and worked better than BrowserSync.

Particular

Yes, finally something that works and easy! You shoulld add to your answer the mains steps to do so in case the link goes off – Pigpen

I added a link to the actual package. If that goes down, then we probably shouldn't use this anyway. – Particular

Answer 4

After some search I found a very simple solution:

Add following reference to csproj:

<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation" Version="3.1.3" />

Add AddRazorRuntimeCompilation() to your services configuration

services.AddControllersWithViews().AddRazorRuntimeCompilation();

Spearhead