Book Image

C# 8.0 and .NET Core 3.0 – Modern Cross-Platform Development - Fourth Edition

By : Mark J. Price
Book Image

C# 8.0 and .NET Core 3.0 – Modern Cross-Platform Development - Fourth Edition

By: Mark J. Price

Overview of this book

In C# 8.0 and .NET Core 3.0 – Modern Cross-Platform Development, Fourth Edition, expert teacher Mark J. Price gives you everything you need to start programming C# applications. This latest edition uses the popular Visual Studio Code editor to work across all major operating systems. It is fully updated and expanded with new chapters on Content Management Systems (CMS) and machine learning with ML.NET. The book covers all the topics you need. Part 1 teaches the fundamentals of C#, including object-oriented programming, and new C# 8.0 features such as nullable reference types, simplified switch pattern matching, and default interface methods. Part 2 covers the .NET Standard APIs, such as managing and querying data, monitoring and improving performance, working with the filesystem, async streams, serialization, and encryption. Part 3 provides examples of cross-platform applications you can build and deploy, such as web apps using ASP.NET Core or mobile apps using Xamarin.Forms. The book introduces three technologies for building Windows desktop applications including Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, as well as web applications, web services, and mobile apps.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Understanding async and await

C# 5 introduced two keywords to simplify working with the Task type. They are especially useful for the following:

  • Implementing multitasking for a graphical user interface (GUI)
  • Improving the scalability of web applications and web services

In Chapter 16, Building Websites Using the Model-View-Controller Pattern, we will explore how the async and await keywords can improve scalability in websites.

In Chapter 20, Building Windows Desktop Apps, we will explore how the async and await keywords can implement multitasking with a GUI. But for now, let's learn the theory of why these two C# keywords were introduced, and then later you will see them used in practice.

Improving responsiveness for console apps

One of the limitations with console applications is that you can only use the await keyword inside methods that are marked as async..., and C# 7 and earlier do not allow the Main method to be marked as async! Luckily, a new...