CoreLMS: Let's Build a Cleanish, SOLIDish LMS From Scratch in ASP.Net Core

(I love cheesy stock photos.)

Woo! My first project to be detailed here on Dev (and built live on Twitch, step by step).

My primary client is a provider of continuing education, primarily online, for professionals, and our legacy PHP web app that acts as both Learning Management System and ecommerce platform is long, long overdue for a ground-up overhaul.

So let's build it!

Or part of it, at least.

Get the Git

Project Overview

My goal for this project is to build a functional, basic, and open source learning management system including basic e-commerce functionality.

(I'll then take that core system and build on our more extensive customizations and business processes in closed source.)

This is a learning project for me.

My intent is to practice building according to a number of common patterns and best practices that I have less-than-ideal experience with (detailed below), so A) don't expect it to be perfect, and B) follow along and help me get it right!

Super High-Level Specs:

• Build as a monolithic application (for now)
  • System design lends well to a microservices architecture for possible future exploration
• Basic Stack:
  • ASP.Net Core MVC (starting with 3.1, plan to move to 5.0)
  • Entity Framework Core (ditto)
• Build with base Bootstrap 4 (5?) to support easy theming in the future

Learning/Demonstration Goals:

I have a number of best practices and patterns that I want to implement (some for the first time) in this production-ready system.

These include:

• SOLID adherence
• Clean Code Architecture
• Repository-ish Pattern with EF Core
• Unit and Integration Testing
• Proper logging (with Serilog?)
• CI/CD
• SPA for course access using Blazor (secondary goal)

Follow Along, Take Part!

As mentioned at the top, I'll be developing this project live on Wednesdays on Twitch (and possibly other days as my schedule allows). I may occasionally wrap up boring bits off-stream, but all code will be published for open source use at the Github repo above.

I'd be honored for you to take part: join the conversation here or on Twitch, drop issues on Github, whatever you like.

Wrapping Up

Since I already kicked off the planning and early development last week, I'll have another post up very shortly going over the thinking there and with a link to the archived broadcast.

Other than that, I'll be live tomorrow (Wednesday August 4) at 12pm CT / 5pm UTC to build a few more entities, start the first business logic service, and add the first unit tests (following TDD as best I can as I learn).

Hope to see you around, and more than anything, I hope it helps ANYONE else get caught up or just learn a few things like I've been needing to!

Cheers,
John / Fitzy