Dockerizing .NET Console App

Deploying .NET Console Apps can often be complex and time-consuming, involving manual configuration and setup on various environments. Docker, a popular containerization platform, provides a solution by encapsulating the entire application stack into a single, portable container that can run consistently across different environments. In this blog post, we will delve into how to containerize a .NET Console App, simplifying the deployment process, improving application portability, and reducing dependency issues.

First let’s create a console application in visual studio By following the below steps

Select “Create a new project” in the home menu,

Choose “Console App” and click “Next”,

Choose a name for your project, solution and also choose location directory and click “Next”

Go with default chosen “Framework” and click “Create” which will create your consoleApplication.

To test everything is working fine click on the run button in visual studio, If you see “Hello, World!” printed to the console as follows, then you are good to go.

First you need to generate the build file for the app by following the instructions as follows, Right click on the Application Folder and click “publish”

Choose folder and click next,

Again choose “Folder” again and click “Next”

Go with the default file location and click “Finish”

Now click “Publish”, which will generate build files along with the “.dll” file which we will use to run our app inside the docker container.

Dockerizing the app

                                    
                                        
  FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/runtime:6.0
  COPY bin/Release/net6.0/publish .
  ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "ConsoleApp1.dll"]
    
                                    
                                

Let’s see what each of the above docker commands does in our dockerfile,

FROM - it builds the docker image from the base image “mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/runtime:6.0” which is available on docker hub

COPY - copies the build files that we generated to the docker container

ENTRYPOINT- specifies the command that we want to run when the container gets created

Now Create a file called “Dockerfile” with no extensions in the root where the “program.cs” file is located and copy and paste the below code. 

Now build the docker image for the app by running the below command in the command line where the project folder is located.

                                    
                                        
    docker build -t dotnet-docker 
    
                                    
                                

Then run the image using the image name as follows,

                                    
                                        
    docker run dotnet-docker
    
                                    
                                

You can see that the docker image has run successfully.

We have successfully containerized the dot net console application and by encapsulating the entire application stack in a single container, you can eliminate dependency issues, streamline deployment, and enhance scalability and reliability.

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