Deploy .NET Blazor WebAssembly Application to AWS Amplify

It's real .NET running in the browser on WebAssembly, and you can reuse code and libraries from the server-side parts of your application. AWS Amplify comes with a rich set of purpose-built tools and features that let developers quickly and easily build CI/CD Pipelines for full-stack applications on AWS.

Overview of solution

In this post, you will deploy a Blazor WebAssembly Application from a git repository to AWS Amplify. You will create a .NET 7.0 Blazor WebAssembly on a local machine using AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), host it in a repository on GitLab, and deploy it to Amplify using CI/CD tools.

This workshop can be followed on: Windows 11/Ubuntu 22.04 LTS/macOS 13.0 “Ventura”.

Blazor to AWS Amplify hosting outline.

Getting started

You will walk through the following steps:

Create Blazor WebAssembly application on a local machine using the CLI.
Test/run the application locally.
Create a remote repository on GitLab.
Setup Amplify.
Test/run the application on AWS.

Prerequisites

For this walkthrough, you should have the following prerequisites:

AWS Account – How to create an AWS account.
Dotnet 7.0 version, or higher – How to install Dotnet version.
Git CLI on Windows/Linux/macOS – How to install Git CLI.
GitLab account – How to create a GitLab account.

Walkthrough

Build Blazor WebAssembly Locally:

Let’s start creating a Blazor WebAssembly application on a local machine using the CLI:

Open the command line interface.
Create a directory for your application by running the following command:
```
 mkdir BlazorWebApp
```
Change to the directory you just created by running the following command:
```
 cd BlazorWebApp
```
Create the Blazor WebAssembly Application by running the following command:
```
 dotnet new blazorwasm
```
Run the application:
```
 dotnet run
```
Copy the URL after “Now listening on:”, and paste it into your browser.
Example: http://localhost:5020 (the port might be different for you).
After testing your application, go back to the terminal and press <ctrl> + c to stop the application.
Create a .gitignore file for your project by running the following command:
```
 dotnet new gitignore
```
Create a file called amplify.yml in the root directory of your application. The name must be exactly amplify.yml and would contain the commands used by AWS CodeBuild to build your application.

Copy and paste the following code to the amplify.yml file.

version: 1
frontend:
  phases:
    preBuild:
      commands:
        - curl -sSL https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.sh > dotnet-install.sh
        - chmod +x *.sh
        - ./dotnet-install.sh -c 7.0 -InstallDir ./dotnet7
        - ./dotnet7/dotnet --version
    build:
      commands:
        - ./dotnet7/dotnet publish -c Release -o release
  artifacts:
    baseDirectory: /release/wwwroot
    files:
      - '**/*'
  cache:
    paths: []

Create a GitLab repository for your application:

In the root folder of your application enter the following commands (Making sure that you have configured git CLI with email and user):

 git add --all
 git commit -m “first commit”
 git branch -M main
 git remote add origin https://gitlab.com/<username>/blazorToAmplify.git # replace <username> with your gitlab username
  for ssh authentication use:
  git remote add origin git@gitlab.com:<username>/blazortoamplify.git
  git push -u origin main

Setup Amplify:

Log in to the AWS account:
- Go to AWS Amplify Service.
- Select Get started, or All apps.
- Select New app, Host Web App from the dropdown list.
Choose GitLab.
Select Continue. If you are still logged in on your GitLab account, then the page will automatically authenticate you, otherwise select the Authenticate Button.
Choose your repository: in my case, davidconoh/blazortoamplify.
Branch: main.
Select next.
Give your app a name.
Amplify.yml will be automatically detected and will be used to build the application on AWS.
Select Next to review the configuration.
Select Save and Deploy.
Amplify will provision, build, and deploy the application.
When the process is complete, select the URL of your application and test the application.
Congratulations! Your Blazor WebAssembly is running on Amplify.

Cleaning up

To avoid incurring future charges, delete the resources. On Amplify, choose your app name on the left panel, select action, and then delete app.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you deployed your first Blazor WebAssembly Application to AWS Amplify.

In this blog post, you learned how to easily build a full CI/CD pipeline for a Blazor WebAssembly app using AWS Amplify. It was only necessary to specify the repository and the amplify.yml file holding the build commands at the root directory of the repo. You can easily add a custom domain to your application by visiting Set up custom domains on AWS Amplify Hosting, as well.

To learn more about using amplify.yml to build your application, visit Configuring build settings – AWS Amplify. and .NET on AWS to learn how to migrate .NET applications to the Cloud. The .NET on AWS YouTube playlist is also packed with .NET on AWS videos, including AWS re:Invent sessions.

You can find Build web applications with Blazor on Microsoft Learn to help with a deeper understanding of Blazor.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

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