What is .NET Blazor, and How Does it Work?

Blazor is a cutting-edge framework from Microsoft that enables developers to build interactive web applications using C# instead of JavaScript.

.NET Blazor is a modern web user interface development technology that creates high-quality interactive single-page applications (SPAs), web applications, Webassembly apps, games, Visual Studio, .net core, desktop applications, mobile apps, and more. It is integrated with the .NET platform and offers access to numerous ecosystems using APIs, programming languages, and runtime environments.

Blazor allows you to build amazing web applications, and this allows you to develop strong, scalable, and maintainable web applications with a unified development model across the process. In this blog, we’ll discuss how .NET Blazor works and ways to use three different types of applications with Blazor. Let us begin.

What is .NET Blazor?

.NET Blazor is Microsoft’s popular open-source web development platform that supports creating and deploying various applications. It includes desktop, games, mobile, and web applications and services. Using the .NET runtime and ASP.NET Core Blazor allows developers to build modern-generation applications by using preferred languages, tools, and frameworks.

How does .NET Blazor Work?

Blazor helps build an amazing Blazor web-assembler app for its users. .NET offers an integrated development environment (IDE), tools, and libraries. These all support various programming languages, such as C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, and JavaScript, on the server side by using Visual Studio.

The .NET Blazor application IDE helps developers quickly design, write, and test the code for web-based applications. This is done in a unified web development environment on the server side.

Simultaneously, at the back end, it uses net runtime for Visual Studio on the Blazor server or Blazor hybrid. It also uses wizards, templates, and several other features that help developers in every step.

Blazor Server comes with a robust set of tools that are useful for Blazor WebAssembly apps. This consists of a Visual Studio Code Editor, which is used to edit the source code in Visual Studio. The Forms designer is used to create unique user interfaces in the net runtime.

Similarly, the data access layer communicates with the databases, followed by the workflow designer for developing business processes. The debugging engine is used to troubleshoot the native client app issues.

The .NET Blazor application platform can host a web app on Microsoft Azure. This provides users with seamless access to cloud services like storage, analytics, and identity management for Blazor server hosting.

By using the .NET Blazor application, developers can quickly deploy complex web solutions and a web app for Visual Studio with the help of the Blazor server application and Blazor UI thread. And, with this solution, there is no need for dedicated servers or any maintenance. It includes combined web view control, making it an ideal choice for organizations that want to build enterprise-level web applications on the same page.

Developing a Full-Stack Web Application with Blazor

Blazor Web applications help in developing web applications by using a component-based architecture. This allows developers to render their application’s user interface (UI) on the server or client size. Developers also have the freedom to mix both approaches on the same page.

.NET Blazor quickly displays the user interface (UI) by rendering HTML on the server. This results in faster page loading because it does not download a lot of JavaScript at the backend to display the content. It also consists of interactive server-side rendering, and Blazor handles the complete user interaction operations like button clicks on the server. This is done by establishing a real-time connection with the help of a browser.

This technique offers a seamless and better user experience without creating individual API endpoints. The page content is initially generated and delivered to the client as regular HTML. This makes the app responsive.

Blazor uses WebAssembly, which helps render the UI according to the client’s size. This means the .NET code runs directly in the browser and provides complete access to the browser features and JavaScript. While running Blazor on WebAssembly, the code works in the browser’s security sandbox, securing it against harmful activities on the client-side machine.

Blazor applications can completely run on WebAssembly in the browser without any requirement of the server. For such independent applications, all the files are deployed as static files on a web server. Once downloaded, these apps can be cached and run offline as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).

Building a Native Client Application with .NET Blazor Hybrid

Blazor Hybrid helps to use Razor components in a native client application with a combination of native and web technologies for web, mobile, and desktop platforms. The code usually runs in the.NET process and renders the website user interface in an embedded web view control. This is done using a local interop channel.

WebAssenbly is not used in hybrid applications because these hybrid apps are built using the.NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI). It is a cross-platform framework that is used for building native mobile and desktop applications by using C# and XAML.

The Blazor Hybrid also supports Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Forms to transform applications from old technology to .NET MAUI.

Building a Cross-Platform Mobile App with .NET Blazor

Microsoft’s announcement that .NET Blazor will support cross-platform mobile apps elicited both supportive and critical responses from developers. While some welcomed the new feature in the Blazor toolkit, several developers voiced their worries about the increasing options for creating user interfaces with .NET technologies.

This variety makes it difficult to decide which one to invest time and resources in training a team for. If you’re interested in app development with Blazor open a command prompt of the shell window for creating the project by running commands. You need to follow further steps in detail that are provided at the official website of Microsoft.

Conclusion

.NET Blazor is a popular framework for developing interactive client-side web UIs with the help of.NET. This helps developers build a rich and interactive user interface (UI) by using C# instead of JavaScript. It uses server-side and client-side app logic, which is written in .NET Blazor. It renders the UI, such as HTML and CSS, for extensive browser support, including mobile servers.

It integrates easily with modern applications running on .NET. By, using .NET for client-side web development provides various benefits, such as coding in C# instead of JavaScript, using an extensive .NET library ecosystem, and sharing app logic across client and server.