A .NET project which include some of the common things needed at NHS.UK.
View the latest deployment of main branch.
- ASP .NET Core MVC Views using .NET 3.1 Framework
- NHS.UK frontend library
- NHS.UK header and footer Nuget package (on this branch)
Setup for NUnit unit tests.
Automated CI pipeline to deploy pushes to main to nhsuk development environment.
- Checkout
- Nuget - restore packages including
- Test - runs tests in NUnit test project
- Build - build web application
- Publish - publish web application
- Deploy - deploy to Azure web service
The application runs on Windows and Linux using either Visual Studio or CLI.
For dev the application will run on https://localhost:5001/service-name with the base path being configurable in Startup.cs
We always use base paths for applications so it is easier for infra to handle our application in higher environments and to ensure any assets are served from the correct application and not the domain root which would hit Wagtail.
Building the web application will automatically run npm install && npm run build. An incremental build is used so that these commands are only run if relevant files are modified, e.g. main.scss is modified.
The commands can be forced to run by a Rebuild in Visual Studio or running dotnet --no-incremental if using the CLI.
The npm install command installs all NPM dependencies listed within the package.json.
The npm run build command runs the gulp build task.
The application contains 2 tasks in gulpfile.js.
The task gulp build will build CSS and JS assets and add them to wwwroot/dist. These files are not commited to the repository.
The task gulp does the same as gulp build but adds a watch to recompile assets as they change in wwwroot/src/**/*.
A single SCSS file exists at wwwroot/src/scss/main.scss.
This file imports the required SCSS from NHS.UK frontend library.
Any custom SCSS can be added or imported into this file.
The Gulp tasks compile this file into CSS and minify it for production.
The resulting JavaScript is saved in wwwroot/dist/main.css. This file is not commited to the repository.
A single JavaScript file exists at wwwroot/src/js/main.js.
This file imports the required JavaScript from NHS.UK frontend library.
Any custom ES2015 JavaScript can be added or imported into this file.
The Gulp tasks transpile this file into ES5 JavaScript using Babel and minify it for production. The resulting JavaScript is saved in wwwroot/dist/main.js. This file is not commited to the repository.
The header and footer can be dynamically built by the nhsuk.header-and-footer-client Nuget package. If this is a feature you would like then an example implementation is on this branch.
This takes a bit of configuration hence it not being in the main branch. NHS.UK header and footer Nuget package is available by connecting to the Azure feed.
Adobe analytics script is loaded in based on AdobeAnalyticsScriptUrl set in appsettings.json.
Adobe analytics digitalData object is built dynamically from application URL.
NHS.UK cookier banner is loaded in based on CookieScriptUrl set in appsettings.json.
Developing with Docker on .NET applications is dreadful unfortunately. It is very very slow at rebuilds and you would be better off using .NET CLI if you wish to avoid Visual Studio, that is what the Dockerfile is doing in the background for you anyway.
Some features will not work with docker-compose as it is not running HTTPS out of the box. This requires some additional configuration on your own machine. Details can be found here https://thegreenerman.medium.com/set-up-https-on-local-with-net-core-and-docker-7a41f030fc76
If you want to use the NHS.UK header and footer API you need to generate a Personal Access Token in Azure Devops and pass this to docker-compose.
The main thing we use Docker for on these projects is to build an image, store it in Azure registry and deploy to Azure Kubernates Service.
https://nhsuk-base-application-dev-uks.azurewebsites.net/example-form
A lot of new services at NHS.UK are transactional. This form will store input in TempData across pages which can be used to display a summary page to check answers. This form also handles validation with IValidateObject as we have rewritten validation across many apps now. This is implemented with fully a accessible error summary, and error messages.
https://nhsuk-base-application-dev-uks.azurewebsites.net/example-async?org=nhsuk
This page gets an organisation's repositories from GitHub API and displays them on the page.
The codebase is released under the MIT Licence, unless stated otherwise. This covers both the codebase and any sample code in the documentation. The documentation is © Crown copyright and available under the terms of the Open Government 3.0 licence.