The project file is one of the most important files in our application. It tells .NET how to build the project.
All .NET projects list their dependencies in the .csproj file. If you have worked with JavaScript before, think of it like a package.json file. The difference is, instead of a JSON, this is an XML file.
When you run dotnet restore, it uses the .csproj file to figure out which NuGet packages to download and copy to the project folder (check out the next question to learn more about Nuget).
The .csproj file also contains all the information that .NET tooling needs to build the project. It includes the type of project you are building (console, web, desktop, etc.), the platform this project targets, and any dependencies on other projects or 3rd party libraries.
Here is an example of a .csproj file that lists the Nuget packages and their specific versions.
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFramework>net5.0</TargetFramework>
</PropertyGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<PackageReference Include="AWSSDK.S3" Version="3.5.6.5" />
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite" Version="5.0.1" />
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Extensions.Caching.Memory" Version="5.0.0" />
<PackageReference Include="Npgsql" Version="5.0.1.1" />
<PackageReference Include="Serilog" Version="2.10.0" />
</ItemGroup>
</Project>In the above example,
- The SDK attribute specifies the type of .NET project.
- TargetFramework is the framework this application will run on, .NET 5 in this case.
- The PackageReference element includes the NuGet packages. The Version attribute specifies a version of the package we want.