All .NET things to make Blazor work seamlessly in microfrontends using Piral.
This is the branch for Blazor 8.0 with .NET 8.0. If you want to switch to Blazor with the older .NET Core 3.2, please refer to the
blazor-3.2
,blazor-5.0
,blazor-6.0
, orblazor-7.0
branch. For the most recent version see theblazor-9.0
branch.
You'll also find some information in the piral-blazor package.
We recommend that you watch the video on scaffolding from the standard VS template before you go over the details below.
In general, to create a Blazor pilet using Piral.Blazor
, two approaches can be used:
In this case, it is highly recommended to use our template. More information and installation instructions can be found in Piral.Blazor.Template
.
In this case, follow these steps:
-
Add a
PiralInstance
property to your.csproj
file (The Piral instance name should be the name of the Piral instance you want to use, as it is published on npm.)<PropertyGroup> <TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework> <PiralInstance>my-piral-instance</PiralInstance> </PropertyGroup>
(You can optionally also specify an
NpmRegistry
property. The default for this is set tohttps://registry.npmjs.org/
) -
Install the
Piral.Blazor.Tools
andPiral.Blazor.Utils
packages, make sure they both have a version number of format8.0.x
-
Remove the
Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.DevServer
package and install thePiral.Blazor.DevServer
package (using the same version as the packages from (2)) -
Rename
Program.cs
toModule.cs
, and make sure to make theMain
method an empty method. -
Build the project. The first time you do this, this can take some time as it will fully scaffold the pilet.
If you run the solution using F5
the Piral.Blazor.DevServer
will start the Piral CLI under the hood. This allows you to not only use .NET Hot-Reload, but also replace the pilets on demand.
The *.csproj
file of your pilet offers you some configuration steps to actually tailor the build to your needs.
Here is a minimal example configuration:
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.BlazorWebAssembly">
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>
<PiralInstance>../../app-shell/dist/emulator/app-shell-1.0.0.tgz</PiralInstance>
</PropertyGroup>
<!-- ... -->
</Project>
This one gets the app shell from a local directory. Realistically, you'd have your app shell on a registry. In case of the default registry it could look like
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.BlazorWebAssembly">
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>
<PiralInstance>@mycompany/app-shell</PiralInstance>
</PropertyGroup>
<!-- ... -->
</Project>
but realistically you'd publish the app shell to a private registry on a different URL. In such scenarios you'd also make use of the NpmRegistry
setting:
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.BlazorWebAssembly">
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>
<PiralInstance>@mycompany/app-shell</PiralInstance>
<NpmRegistry>https://registry.mycompany.com/</NpmRegistry>
</PropertyGroup>
<!-- ... -->
</Project>
Besides these two options (required PiralInstance
and optional NpmRegistry
) the following settings exist:
Version
: Sets the version of the pilet. This is a/the standard project property.PiralInstance
: Sets the name (or local path) of the app shell.NpmRegistry
: Sets the URL of the npm registry to use. Will be used for getting npm dependencies of the app shell (and the app shell itself).Bundler
: Sets the name of the bundler to use. By default this isesbuild
. The list of all available bundlers can be found in the Piral documentation.ProjectsWithStaticFiles
: Sets the names of the projects that contain static files, which require to be copied to the output directory. Separate the names of these projects by semicolons.Monorepo
: Sets the behavior of the scaffolding to a monorepo mode. The value must beenable
to switch this on.PiralCliVersion
: Determines the version of thepiral-cli
tooling to use. By default this islatest
.PiralBundlerVersion
: Determines the version of thepiral-cli-<bundler>
to use. By default, this is the same as the value of thePiralCliVersion
.OutputFolder
: Sets the temporary output folder for the generated pilet (default:..\piral~
).ConfigFolder
: Sets the folder where the config files are stored (default: empty, i.e., current project folder).MocksFolder
: Sets the folder where the Kras mock files are stored (default:.\mocks
).PiletKind
: Sets the pilet kind (values:global
,local
; default:local
). Global pilets will always be published without trimming.PiletPriority
: Sets the optional priority of the pilet when loading (any representable positive number). DLLs of Blazor pilets with higher numbers will always be loaded before the current DLLs (default: none).PublishFeedUrl
: Sets the URL to be used for publishing the pilet. If this is left free then using "Publish" in Visual Studio will not trigger a publish of the pilet.PublishFeedApiKey
: Sets the API Key to be used when publishing the pilet. If this is left free then the interactive upload is used, which will open a web browser for logging into the feed service.
A more extensive example:
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.BlazorWebAssembly">
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>
<Version>1.2.3</Version>
<PiralInstance>@mycompany/app-shell</PiralInstance>
<PiralCliVersion>next</PiralCliVersion>
<PiralBundlerVersion>1.1.0</PiralBundlerVersion>
<NpmRegistry>https://registry.mycompany.com/</NpmRegistry>
<Bundler>esbuild</Bundler>
<Monorepo>disable</Monorepo>
<ProjectsWithStaticFiles>
designsystem;
someotherproject;
thirdproj
</ProjectsWithStaticFiles>
<PiletPriority>999</PiletPriority>
</PropertyGroup>
<!-- ... -->
</Project>
While pilets that define PiletKind
to be global
only have shared dependencies, the default for local
pilets is to have integrated dependencies. If certain dependencies of local
pilets should also be loaded into the global context (effectively sharing the dependency between all pilets - independent of the version) then you need to put those dependencies into a dedicated ItemGroup
using the Label
shared
:
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.BlazorWebAssembly">
<!-- ... -->
<ItemGroup Label="shared">
<PackageReference Include="Autofac.Extensions.DependencyInjection" Version="8.0.0" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<!-- ... -->
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly" Version="8.0.0" />
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.DevServer" Version="8.0.0" PrivateAssets="all" />
</ItemGroup>
</Project>
A standard page in Blazor, using the @page
directive, will work as expected, and will be automatically registered on the pilet API.
To register an extension, the PiralExtension
attribute can be used. You will also have to provide the extension slot name that defines where the extension should be rendered. The component can even be registered into multiple slots using multiple attributes.
//counter.razor
@attribute [PiralExtension("my-counter-slot")]
@attribute [PiralExtension("another-extension-slot")]
<h1>Counter</h1>
<p>Current count: @currentCount</p>
<button @onclick="IncrementCount">Click me</button>
@code {
int currentCount = 0;
void IncrementCount()
{
currentCount++;
}
}
To use an extension within a Blazor component, the <Extension>
component can be used.
<Extension Name="my-counter-slot"></Extension>
To register a Blazor component for use in the pilet API, the PiralComponent
attribute can be used in two ways:
[PiralComponent]
, this will register the component using the fully qualified name.[PiralComponent(<name>)]
will register the component using the custom name provided.
To register these components onto the pilet API, a setup.tsx
file should be created at the root of your Blazor project.
This file may then, for example to register a tile, look like this:
import { PiletApi } from '../piral~/<project_name>/node_modules/<piral_instance>';
type AddScript = (path: string, attrs?: Record<string, string>) => void;
type AddStyles = (path: string, pos?: 'first' | 'last' | 'before' | ' after') => void;
export default (app: PiletApi, addScript: AddScript, addStyles: AddStyles) => {
//for a component marked with[PiralComponent("my-tile")]
app.registerTile(app.fromBlazor('my-tile'));
};
The addScript
function can be used to actually add more scripts, e.g.:
export default (app: PiletApi, addScript: AddScript, addStyles: AddStyles) => {
addScript("_content/Microsoft.Authentication.WebAssembly.Msal/AuthenticationService.js");
};
The first argument is the (relative) path to the RCL script, while the optional second argument provides additional attributes for the script to be added to the DOM.
The addStyles
function can be used to add more style sheets, e.g.:
export default (app: PiletApi, addScript: AddScript, addStyles: AddStyles) => {
addStyles("_content/MudBlazor/MudBlazor.min.css");
};
Important: Non-abstract / exposed components with PiralComponent
cannot have a type parameter. As these are directly instantiated from JavaScript there is no way to define the type to be used. As such, you cannot mark components as @[PiralComponent]
and @typeparam
. If you want to use a generic component, then wrap it (i.e., use a second component declared as a PiralComponent
, which only mounts / renders the first component with the desired generic type).
Parameters (or "props") are properly forwarded. Usually, it should be sufficient to declare [Parameter]
properties in the Blazor components. Besides, there are more advanced ways.
For instance, to access the params
prop of an extension you can use the PiralParameter
attribute. This way, you can "forward" props from JS to the .NET name of your choice (in this case "params" is renamed to "Parameters").
@attribute [PiralExtension("sample-extension")]
<div>@Parameters.Test</div>
@code {
public class MyParams
{
public string Test { get; set; }
}
[Parameter]
[PiralParameter("params")]
public MyParams Parameters { get; set; }
}
For the serialization you'll need to use either a JsonElement
or something that can be serialized into. In this case, we used a class called MyParams
.
Important: Make sure that your classes here are serializable, i.e., that they have a default / empty constructor (no parameters) and are public. Best case: These should be POCOs.
With the PiralParameter
you can also access / forward children to improve object access:
@attribute [PiralExtension("sample-extension")]
<div>@Message</div>
@code {
[Parameter]
[PiralParameter("params.Test")]
public string Message { get; set; }
}
That way, we only have a property Message
which reflects the params.Test
. So if the extension is called like that:
<app.Extension
name="sample-extension"
params={
{
Test: "Hello world",
}
}
/>
It would just work.
If you want to match the route parameter you can use the generic approach, too:
@page "/foo/{id}"
<div>@Id</div>
@code {
[Parameter]
[PiralParameter("match.params.id")]
public string Id { get; set; }
}
However, since using match.params
is quite verbose and easy to get wrong you can also use the special PiralRouteParameter
attribute.
@page "/foo/{id}"
<div>@Id</div>
@code {
[Parameter]
[PiralRouteParameter("id")]
public string Id { get; set; }
}
Note that there is another convenience deriving from the use of PiralRouteParameter
. If your route parameter name matches the name of the property then you can also omit the argument:
@page "/foo/{Id}"
<div>@Id</div>
@code {
[Parameter]
[PiralRouteParameter]
public string Id { get; set; }
}
In addition to route parameters you can also match the query parameters using the PiralQueryParameter
attribute:
@page "/foo"
<div>@Id</div>
@code {
[Parameter]
[PiralQueryParameter]
public string Id { get; set; }
}
The previous example would match /foo?id=bar
with Id
being set to bar
. You could also change the name of the used query parameter:
@page "/foo"
<div>@SearchQuery</div>
@code {
[Parameter]
[PiralQueryParameter("q")]
public string SearchQuery { get; set; }
}
This would print hello
for /foo?q=hello
.
You can define services for dependency injection in a Module
class. The name of the class is arbitrary, but it shows the difference to the standard Program
class, which should not be available, as mentioned before.
To be able to compile successfully, a Main
method should be declared, which should remain empty.
public class Module
{
public static void Main()
{
// this entrypoint should remain empty
}
public static void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
// configure dependency injection for the components in the pilet here
}
}
The ConfigureServices
method is optional. If you want to configure dependency injection in your pilet then use this.
If a third-party library requires globally shared dependencies (or global injected DI) then add it to a global pilet (setting the PiletKind
to global
in the csproj / build configuration).
Important: Global pilets will rewrite scoped services to singleton services. By default, Blazor WASM will operate in a singleton context, which means that the basic idea for scoped services should be restricted to specific use cases that are bound to pilets. As such, global pilets try to support the idea of providing shared service-instances by avoiding scoping.
Additionally, the ConfigureServices
method supports another argument providing the configuration of the pilet, i.e., the IConfiguration
object. So, the example above could be rewritten to be:
public class Module
{
public static void Main()
{
// this entrypoint should remain empty
}
public static void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services, IConfiguration configuration)
{
}
}
The configuration uses the meta.config
of the Pilet API provided by the pilet.
Important: There is no support for the appsettings...json file as the configuration is assumed to be distributed. Use the meta.config
approach described below for local development and a proper feed service with configuration support for production purposes.
Every pilet gets automatically a service called IPiletService
injected.
The IPiletService
service can be used to compute the URL of a resource.
@inject IPiletService Pilet
The relevant helper method is GetUrl
. You can use it like:
@page "/example"
@inject IPiletService Pilet
<img src=@Pilet.GetUrl("images/something.png") alt="Some image" />
In the example above the resource images/something.png
would be placed in the wwwroot
folder (i.e., wwwroot/images/something
). As the content of the wwwroot
folder is copied, the image will also be copied. However, the old local URL is not valid in a pilet, which needs to prefix its resources with its base URL. The function above does that. In that case, the URL would maybe be something like http://localhost:1234/$pilet-api/0/images/something.png
while debugging, and another fully qualified URL later in production.
You can use the IPiletService
service to emit and receive events via the standard Pilet API event bus. This is great for doing loosely-coupled pilet-to-pilet communication.
Example:
@attribute [PiralComponent]
@inject IPiletService ps
@implements IDisposable
<aside class=@_sidebarClass>
<a @onclick=@CloseSidebar style="display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px; cursor: pointer;">x</a>
</aside>
@code {
[Parameter]
public bool IsOpen { get; set; } = false;
[Parameter]
public EventCallback<bool> IsOpenChanged { get; set; }
string _sidebarClass { get => IsOpen ? "sidebar open" : "sidebar"; }
public void Dispose()
{
ps.RemoveEventListener<bool>("toggle-sidebar", ToggleSidebar);
}
protected override void OnInitialized()
{
ps.AddEventListener<bool>("toggle-sidebar", ToggleSidebar);
}
public void ToggleSidebar(bool value) => IsOpenChanged.InvokeAsync(value);
public void CloseSidebar() => ToggleSidebar(false);
}
Another component can now trigger this by using ps.DispatchEvent("toggle-sidebar", false);
with an injected @inject IPiletService ps
.
You can use the IPiletService
service to call methods living on the pilet API. This makes mostly sense for APIs that are quite primitive, e.g., accepting and returning only strings, booleans, and integers.
In general this is working via the Call
API. An example would be:
@attribute [PiralComponent]
@inject IPiletService ps
<button @onclick=@LogValue>Log current value</button>
@code {
public async void LogValue()
{
var value = await ps.Call<string>("getData", "myValue");
Console.WriteLine("Currently stored value is: {0}", value);
}
}
For some more common pilet API functions extension methods exist. The call beforehand to the getData
function could be simplified with the GetDataValue
extension:
@attribute [PiralComponent]
@inject IPiletService ps
<button @onclick=@LogValue>Log current value</button>
@code {
public async void LogValue()
{
var value = await ps.GetDataValue<string>("myValue");
Console.WriteLine("Currently stored value is: {0}", value);
}
}
Localization works almost exactly as with standard Blazor, except that the language can be changed at runtime directly rather then requiring a full reload of the page.
The other difference is that the initial language is no longer decided by the server's response headers, but rather by the app shell. The initial configuration options of the piral-blazor
plugin allow setting the initialLanguage
. These options also allow setting up a callback to decide when to change the language (and to what language). If not explicitly stated Blazor will just listen to the select-language
event of Piral, providing a key currentLanguage
in the event arguments.
To dynamically change / refresh your components when the language change you'll need to listen to the LanguageChanged
event emitted by the injected IPiletService
instance:
@inject IStringLocalizer<MyComponent> loc
@inject IPiletService pilet
<h2>@loc["greeting"]</h2>
@code {
protected override void OnInitialized()
{
pilet.LanguageChanged += (s, e) => this.StateHasChanged();
base.OnInitialized();
}
}
This way, your components will always remain up-to-date and render the right translations.
Sometimes Blazor components require some global components (or "providers") to be added. To accomplish this you can create components marked with the PiralProviderAttribute
attribute.
Example:
@attribute [PiralProvider]
<MudThemeProvider/>
<MudDialogProvider/>
<MudSnackbarProvider/>
Providers will never receive any parameters - they are rendered only once and will remain active for the whole lifecycle of the application. There can be more than one provider.
Provider components are adjacent to your other components, which may come and go and will be - in general - somewhere else in the DOM. As such they are not ideal for providing some cascading value or other properties. They are ideal, however, when you need something running all the time.
In contrast, Piral also has the concept of a root component, which comes with another set of constraints.
By default, the Blazor pilets run in a dedicated Blazor application with no root component. If you need a root component, e.g., to provide some common values from a CascadingValue
component such as CascadingAuthenticationState
from the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.Authorization
package, you can actually override the default root component:
@attribute [PiralAppRoot]
<CascadingAuthenticationState>
@ChildContent
</CascadingAuthenticationState>
@code {
[Parameter]
public RenderFragment ChildContent { get; set; }
}
You can also provide your own providers here (or nest them as you want):
@attribute [PiralAppRoot]
<CascadingValue Value="@theme">
<div>
@ChildContent
</div>
</CascadingValue>
@code {
[Parameter]
public RenderFragment ChildContent { get; set; }
private string theme = "dark";
}
Note: There is always just one PiralAppRoot
component. If you did not supply one then the default PiralAppRoot
will be used. If you already provided one, no other PiralAppRoot
can be used.
It is critical to understand that each attached pilet component starts its own Blazor rendering tree. Therefore, while there is just a single PiralAppRoot
component there might be multiple instances active at a given point in time. This is a crucial difference to PiralProvider
components, which are essentially singletons from a rendering perspective.
Pilets can add global HTTP interceptors, which will be triggered for all HTTP requests using the global HttpClient
. This can be done by adding a singleton IHttpInterceptor
to the services, e.g.:
public class Module
{
public static void Main() {}
public static void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
services.AddSingleton<IHttpInterceptor, MyInterceptor>();
}
}
The interceptor itself has methods to react to a request (before sending the actual request) or response (after receiving the response).
class MyInterceptor : IHttpInterceptor
{
public Task<HttpRequestMessage> OnRequest(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
// Add some header
request.Headers.Add("x-foo-bar", "other");
return Task.FromResult(request);
}
public Task<HttpResponseMessage> OnResponse(HttpResponseMessage response, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
// Don't do anything
return Task.FromResult(response);
}
}
In case you want to intercept calls for injecting a bearer token obtained from calling the getAccessCode()
pilet API you can just add a simple convenience service:
public class Module
{
public static void Main() {}
public static void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
services.AddAccessCodeInterceptor();
}
}
This way the current access code is retrieved and inserted into the request via the Authorization
header.
From your Blazor project folder, run your pilet via the Piral CLI:
cd ../piral~/<project-name>
npm start
In addition to this, if you want to debug your Blazor pilet using for example Visual Studio, these requirements should be considered:
- keep the Piral CLI running
- debug your Blazor pilet using IISExpress
⚠️ if you want to run your pilet and directly visit it in the browser without debugging via IISExpress, you will have to disable a kras script injector before visiting the pilet. To do this, go tohttp://localhost:1234/manage-mock-server/#/injectors
, disable thedebug.js
script, and save your changes. Afterwards, you can visithttp://localhost:1234
.
There are some special files that you can add in your project (adjacent to the .csproj file):
- setup.tsx
- teardown.tsx
- package-overwrites.json
- meta-overwrites.json
- kras-overwrites.json
- js-imports.json
Note: The location of these files can also be changed through the ConfigFolder
option. By default, this one is empty, i.e., all files have to be placed adjacent to the .csproj file as mentioned above. However, if you set the value to, e.g., .piletconfig then the files will be retrieved from this subdirectory. For instance, the setup file would then be read from .piletconfig/setup.tsx.
Let's see what these files do and how they can be used.
The setup.tsx file can be used to define more things that should be done in a pilet's setup
function. By default, the content of the setup
function is auto generated. Things such as @page /path-to-use
components or components with @attribute [PiralExtension("name-of-slot")]
would be automatically registered. However, already in case of @attribute [PiralComponent]
we have a problem. What should this component do? Where is it used?
The solution is to use the setup.tsx file. An example:
export default (app) => {
app.registerMenu(app.fromBlazor('counter-menu'));
app.registerExtension("ListToggle", app.fromBlazor('counter-preview'));
};
This example registers a pilet's component named "counter-menu" as a menu entry. Furthermore, it also adds the "counter-preview" component as an extension to the "ListToggle" slot.
Anything that is available on the Pilet API provided via the app
argument is available in the function. The only import part of setup.tsx is that has a default export - which is actually a function.
The generated / used pilet is a standard npm package. Therefore, it will have a package.json. The content of this package.json is mostly pre-determined. Things such as piral-cli
or the pilet's app shell package are in there. In some cases, additional JS dependencies for runtime or development aspects are necessary or useful. In such cases the package-overwrites.json comes in handy.
For instance, to actually extend the devDependencies
you could write:
{
"devDependencies": {
"axios": "^0.20.0"
}
}
This would add a development dependency to the axios
package. Likewise, other details, such as a publish config or a description could also be added / overwritten:
{
"description": "This is my pilet description.",
"publishConfig": {
"access": "public"
}
}
The rules for the merge follow the Json.NET approach.
The generated / used pilet is served from the local file system instead of a feed service. Therefore, it will not have things like a configuration store. However, you might want to use one - or at least test against one. For this, usually a meta.json file can be used. The content of this meta.json is then merged into the metadata of a served pilet. For Piral.Blazor this file is premade, however, its content can still be overwritten using a meta-overwrites.json file.
For instance, to include a custom config
field (with one config called backendUrl
) in the pilet's metadata you can use the following content:
{
"config": {
"backendUrl": "http://localhost:7345"
}
}
The rules for the merge follow the Json.NET approach.
The teardown.tsx file can be used to define more things that should be done in a pilet's teardown
function. By default, the content of the teardown
function is auto generated. Things such as pages
and extensions
would be automatically unregistered. However, in some cases you will need to unregister things manually. You can do this here.
Some Blazor dependencies require additional JavaScript packages in order to work correctly. The js-imports.json file can be to declare all these. The files will then be added via a generated import
statement in the pilet's root module.
The content of the js-imports.json file is a JSON array. For example:
[
"axios",
"global-date-functions"
]
Includes the two dependencies via the respective import
statements.
The Piral.Blazor.DevServer
can be configured, too. Much like the standard / official Blazor DevServer you can introduce a blazor-devserversettings.json file that describes more options. Most of the contained options are the same as the one for the official Blazor DevServer.
Current options found in the Piral
section:
-
forwardedPaths
- is an array of strings describing the path segments that should be forwarded to the Piral CLI dev server (using kras)Example:
{ "Piral": { "forwardedPaths": [ "/foo" ] } }
-
feedUrl
- is a string defining an URL for including an external / remote feed of pilets into the debug processExample:
{ "Piral": { "feedUrl": "https://feed.piral.cloud/api/v1/pilet/sample" } }
In addition, the options for the DevServer also touch the configured options for the Piral.Blazor.Tools
, such as OutputFolder
which is used to define where the scaffolded pilet is stored.
The log level can be set either within your Blazor pilets using the ILoggingConfiguration
service or from JavaScript:
DotNet.invokeMethodAsync('Piral.Blazor.Core', 'SetLogLevel', logLevel);
Here, the value for logLevel
should be between 0-6, where 0 logs everything (even traces) and 6 logs nothing. Alternatively, you can also set a log level when initializing piral-blazor
.
- I cannot use breakpoints when I debug a Piral.Blazor pilet in VS. What could be wrong?
Make sure you actually emit a PDB and have Debug
selected as configuration. Also, don't change the configuration to have <DebugType>Full</DebugType>
or similar in the project file. You'll need a portable PDB (modern format), not a full PDB (legacy format for Windows).
Piral.Blazor is released using the MIT license. For more information see the license file.