Create a dotnet Standard Library (Step-by-Step)

When people uses term .NET, it greatly depends on the context. There is a distinction between C# and .NET as C# is a programing language syntax that can be used to reference and call methods defined in .NET code libraries or assemblies. We can create an assembly from our C# code and use it’s compiler that’s installed with .NET SDK.

Create a dotnet Standard Library

We will create this library in such a way so it can be used to publish as NuGet package in Azure Artifacts.

Prerequisites

Visual Studio 2019 (If you are following along this blog post)

1. Launch new instance of Visual Studio > Click Create a New Project as shown in Figure 1.

create-new-proj — **Figure 1 – Create New Project**

2. Search for Class Library to select .NET Standard Library as shown in Figure 2.

c#-class-.net-standard-library — **Figure 2 – Select .NET Library**

3. Fill in the required fields > Set Name to HelperLibrary > Solution Name to NuGetDemo and Click Next

configure-new-project — **Figure 3 – New Project and Solution Name**

4. Select .NET Core 3.1 as Target Framework and Click Create

dotnet-core-target-framework — **Figure 4 – .NET Core Target Framework**

5. Once we click on Create, we’ll delete the Class1 that creates by default. **Right Click** to delete the class.

delete-default-class — **Figure 5 – Delete Default Class**

Now we will set the namespace for our project. You can leave the default value as it is but I’m going to change it to “ACloudTechie.Artifact” so it looks little bit different. It means, every class from now on will get the “ACloudTechie.Artifact” as a namespace.

6. Now, Right Click on Project (HelperLibrary) file and Select Properties.

7. Set Default namespace as ACloudTechie.Artifact and Click Save.

8. Right Click on Project node and add new Folder. Set the name to Calculate6

9. Add new Class as this will be very standard class library to demo something.

10. Set Class name to Calculate and click on Add

class-calculate Figure 8 – Class named as Calculate

Let’s Start some coding!

This class will contain two super helpful methods. One method adds two number together and other subtracts one number from the other.

Code Snippet

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace ACloudTechie.Artifact.Calculate
{
    public class Calculator
    {
        public static double Add(double numOne, double numTwo)
        {
            return numOne + numTwo;
        }
        public static double Subtract(double numOne, double numTwo)
        {
            return numOne - numTwo;
        }
    }
}

11. Now, foundation of our library has been setup.

foundation-calculate-library — **Figure 9 – Foundation of Library**

Conclusion

In this post, we went through about What is .NET and how we can create a dotnet Standard Library that can also be used as a NuGet Package. In our next post, we will see how to compile and use it as Helper library.

Thank you for reading!

Create a dotnet Standard Library (Step-By-Step)

Create a dotnet Standard Library

Prerequisites

Let’s Start some coding!

Code Snippet

Conclusion

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