How to use Bootstrap 4 in ASP NET Core

Question

I want to update Bootstrap in ASP NET Core with NuGet  I used this   Install-Package bootstrap -Version 4 0 0   It did add the dependencies but how do I add it to my project now  What is the path for local NuGet dependencies

User · Answer

BS4 is now available on  NET Core 2 2  On the SDK 2 2 105 x64 installer for sure   I m running Visual Studio 2017 with it   So far so good for new web application projects

User · Answer

Try Libman  it s as simple as Bower and you can specify wwwroot lib  as the download folder

User · Answer

As others already mentioned  the package manager Bower  that was usually used for dependencies like this in application that do not rely on heavy client-side scripting  is on the way out and actively recommending to move to other solutions        psst  While Bower is maintained  we recommend yarn and webpack for new front-end projects    So although you can still use it right now  Bootstrap has also announced to drop support for it  As a result  the built-in ASP NET Core templates are slowly being edited to move away from it too   Unfortunately  there is no clear path forward  This is mostly due to the fact that web applications are continuously moving further into the client-side  requiring complex client-side build systems and many dependencies  So if you are building something like that  you might already know how to solve this then  and you can expand your existing build process to simply also include Bootstrap and jQuery there   But there are still many web applications out there that are not that heavy on the client-side  where the application still runs mainly on the server and the server serves static views as a result  Bower previously filled this by making it easy to just publish client-side dependencies without that much of a process   In the  NET world we also have NuGet and with previous ASP NET versions  we could use NuGet as well to add dependencies to some client-side dependencies since NuGet would just place the content into our project correctly  Unfortunately  with the new  csproj format and the new NuGet  installed packages are located outside of our project  so we cannot simply reference those   This leaves us with a few options how to add our dependencies   One-time installation  This is what the ASP NET Core templates  that are not single-page applications  are currently doing  When you use those to create a new application  the wwwroot folder simply contains a folder lib that contains the dependencies     If you look closely at the files currently  you can see that they were originally placed there with Bower to create the template  but that is likely to change soon  The basic idea is that the files are copied once to the wwwroot folder so you can depend on them   To do this  we can simply follow Bootstrap   s introduction and download the compiled files directly  As mentioned on the download site  this does not include jQuery  so we need to download that separately too  it does  contain Popper js though if we choose to use the bootstrap bundle file later   which we will do  For jQuery  we can simply get a single    compressed  production    file from the download site  right-click the link and select  Save link as     from the menu    This leaves us with a few files which will simply extract and copy into the wwwroot folder  We can also make a lib folder to make it clearer that these are external dependencies     That   s all we need  so now we just need to adjust our  Layout cshtml file to include those dependencies  For that  we add the following block to the  lt head gt     lt environment include  Development  gt       lt link rel  stylesheet  href    lib css bootstrap css    gt   lt  environment gt   lt environment exclude  Development  gt       lt link rel  stylesheet  href    lib css bootstrap min css    gt   lt  environment gt    And the following block at the very end of the  lt body gt     lt environment include  Development  gt       lt script src    lib js jquery-3 3 1 js  gt  lt  script gt       lt script src    lib js bootstrap bundle js  gt  lt  script gt   lt  environment gt   lt environment exclude  Development  gt       lt script src    lib js jquery-3 3 1 min js  gt  lt  script gt       lt script src    lib js bootstrap bundle min js  gt  lt  script gt   lt  environment gt    You can also just include the minified versions and skip the  lt environment gt  tag helpers here to make it a bit simpler  But that   s all you need to do to keep you starting   Dependencies from NPM  The more modern way  also if you want to keep your dependencies updated  would be to get the dependencies from the NPM package repository  You can use either NPM or Yarn for this  in my example  I   ll use NPM   To start off  we need to create a package json file for our project  so we can specify our dependencies  To do this  we simply do that from the    Add New Item    dialog     Once we have that  we need to edit it to include our dependencies  It should something look like this        version    1 0 0      name    asp net      private   true     devDependencies          bootstrap    4 0 0        jquery    3 3 1        popper js    1 12 9          By saving  Visual Studio will already run NPM to install the dependencies for us  They will be installed into the node modules folder  So what is left to do is to get the files from there into our wwwroot folder  There are a few options to do that   bundleconfig json for bundling and minification  We can use one of the various ways to consume a bundleconfig json for bundling and minification  as explained in the documentation  A very easy way is to simply use the BuildBundlerMinifier NuGet package which automatically sets up a build task for this   After installing that package  we need to create a bundleconfig json at the root of the project with the following contents              outputFileName    wwwroot vendor min css        inputFiles            node modules bootstrap dist css bootstrap min css              minify      enabled   false                 outputFileName    wwwroot vendor min js        inputFiles            node modules jquery dist jquery min js          node modules popper js dist umd popper min js          node modules bootstrap dist js bootstrap min js              minify      enabled   false           This basically configures which files to combine into what  And when we build  we can see that the vendor min css and vendor js css are created correctly  So all we need to do is to adjust our  Layouts html again to include those files    lt  -- inside  lt head gt  -- gt   lt link rel  stylesheet  href    vendor min css    gt    lt  -- at the end of  lt body gt  -- gt   lt script src    vendor min js  gt  lt  script gt    Using a task manager like Gulp  If we want to move a bit more into client-side development  we can also start to use tools that we would use there  For example Webpack which is a very commonly used build tool for really everything  But we can also start with a simpler task manager like Gulp and do the few necessary steps ourselves   For that  we add a gulpfile js into our project root  with the following contents   const gulp   require  gulp    const concat   require  gulp-concat     const vendorStyles          node modules bootstrap dist css bootstrap min css     const vendorScripts          node modules jquery dist jquery min js        node modules popper js dist umd popper min js        node modules bootstrap dist js bootstrap min js       gulp task  build-vendor-css        gt        return gulp src vendorStyles           pipe concat  vendor min css             pipe gulp dest  wwwroot          gulp task  build-vendor-js        gt        return gulp src vendorScripts           pipe concat  vendor min js             pipe gulp dest  wwwroot          gulp task  build-vendor   gulp parallel  build-vendor-css    build-vendor-js      gulp task  default   gulp series  build-vendor       Now  we also need to adjust our package json to have dependencies on gulp and gulp-concat        version    1 0 0      name    asp net      private   true     devDependencies          bootstrap    4 0 0        gulp     4 0 2        gulp-concat     2 6 1        jquery    3 3 1        popper js    1 12 9          Finally  we edit our  csproj to add the following task which makes sure that our Gulp task runs when we build the project    lt Target Name  RunGulp  BeforeTargets  Build  gt     lt Exec Command  node modules  bin gulp cmd    gt   lt  Target gt    Now  when we build  the default Gulp task runs  which runs the build-vendor tasks  which then builds our vendor min css and vendor min js just like we did before  So after adjusting our  Layout cshtml just like above  we can make use of jQuery and Bootstrap   While the initial setup of Gulp is a bit more complicated than the bundleconfig json one above  we have now have entered the Node-world and can start to make use of all the other cool tools there  So it might be worth to start with this   Conclusion  While this suddenly got a lot more complicated than with just using Bower  we also do gain a lot of control with those new options  For example  we can now decide what files are actually included within the wwwroot folder and how those exactly look like  And we also can use this to make the first moves into the client-side development world with Node which at least should help a bit with the learning curve

User · Answer

Libman seems to be the tool preferred by Microsoft now  It is integrated in Visual Studio 2017 15 8   This article describes how to use it and even how to set up a restore performed by the build process  Bootstrap s documentation tells you what files you need in your project  The following example should work as a configuration for libman json       quot version quot    quot 1 0 quot      quot defaultProvider quot    quot cdnjs quot      quot libraries quot              quot library quot    quot twitter-bootstrap 4 2 1 quot        quot destination quot    quot wwwroot lib bootstrap quot        quot files quot          quot js bootstrap bundle js quot        quot css bootstrap min css quot                      quot library quot    quot jquery 3 3 1 quot        quot destination quot    quot wwwroot lib jquery quot        quot files quot            quot jquery min js quot

User · Answer

Unfortunately  you re going to have a hard time using NuGet to install Bootstrap  or most other JavaScript CSS frameworks  on a  NET Core project  If you look at the NuGet install it tells you it is incompatible     if you must know where local packages dependencies are  they are now in your local profile directory  i e   userprofile   nuget packages bootstrap 4 0 0 content Scripts   However  I suggest switching to npm  or bower - like in Saineshwar s answer

User · Answer

We use bootstrap 4 in asp net core but reference the libraries from  npm  using the  Package Installer  extension and found this to be better than Nuget for Javascript CSS libraries   We then use the  Bundler  amp  Minifier  extension to copy the relevant files for distribution  from the npm node modules folder  which sits outside the project  into wwwroot as we like for development deployment

User · Answer

Why not just use a CDN  Unless you need to edit the code of BS  then you just need to reference the codes in CDN   See BS 4 CDN Here   https   www w3schools com bootstrap4 bootstrap get started asp  At the bottom of the page

User · Answer

Looking into this  it seems like the LibMan approach works best for my needs with adding Bootstrap  I like it because it is now built into Visual Studio 2017 15 8 or later  and has its own dialog boxes   Update 6 11 2020  bootstrap 4 1 3 is now added by default with VS-2019 5  Thanks to Harald S  Hanssen for noticing    The default method VS adds to projects uses Bower but it looks like it is on the way out  In the header of Microsofts bower page they write    Following a couple links lead to Use LibMan with ASP NET Core in Visual Studio where it shows how libs can be added using a built-in Dialog      In Solution Explorer  right-click the project folder in which the   files should be added  Choose Add   Client-Side Library  The Add   Client-Side Library dialog appears   source  Scott Addie 2018      Then for bootstrap just  1  select the unpkg   2  type in  bootstrap      3  Install  After this  you would just want to verify all the includes in the  Layout cshtml or other places are correct  They should be something like href    lib bootstrap dist js bootstrap

User · Answer

Use nmp configuration file  add it to your web project  then add the needed packages in the same way we did using bower json and save  Visual studio will download and install it  You ll find the package the under the nmp node  of your project

User · Answer

What does the trick for me is   1  Right click on wwwroot   Add   Client Side Library  2  Typed  bootstrap  on the search box  3  Select  Choose specific files   4  Scroll down and select a folder   In my case I chose  twitter-bootstrap   5  Check  css  and  js   6  Click  Install      A few seconds later I have all of them wwwroot folder  Do the same for all client side packages that you want to add

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