Project Types Differences

Overall

ASP.NET Zero is offered in three project types, all of them built on the same ASP.NET Core backend:

• ASP.NET Core & jQuery - a server rendered ASP.NET Core MVC application.
• ASP.NET Core & Angular - an Angular single page application talking to the Web.Host API.
• ASP.NET Core & React - a React single page application talking to the Web.Host API. Introduced in v15.1.

Because the backend is shared, everything that lives on the server side (application services, multi-tenancy, permissions, background jobs, webhooks, GraphQL, health check endpoints, the MAUI mobile app, the public web site, Power Tools code generation) behaves identically in all three. The differences below are all on the UI side.

Legacy project types

ASP.NET MVC 5.x and AngularJS 1.x based project types are no longer developed. Beginning from v4.1, new features are implemented only for the ASP.NET Core based project types. See Old Project Type Info for details.

Version Differences

External login providers

Apple sign-in is supported by ASP.NET Zero, but in the .NET MAUI mobile application rather than in the web UIs. "Sign in with Apple" is a native Apple-platform API, so it cannot be completed from a browser. The mobile app authenticates with AppleSignInAuthenticator and posts the resulting identity token to the API, which validates it through the Authentication:Apple section of Web.Host. The web UIs therefore leave Apple out on purpose: Web.Mvc does not register the provider at all, and the Angular and React login pages filter it out of the provider list returned by GetExternalAuthenticationProviders.

UI libraries

See the development guide documents for the details of all features in the different project types:

• ASP.NET Core & jQuery
• ASP.NET Core & Angular
• ASP.NET Core & React