Is it possible to self-host an ASP.NET Core Application without IIS?

Question

I have a full-working ASP.NET MVC application (.NET Core, ASP.NET Core) which runs fine in Visual Studio (which uses IISExpress).

I would now like to have a console application which takes the ASP.NET Core application and hosts it (self hosting).

Answer 1

Is it possible to self-host an ASP.NET Core Application without IIS?

Yes. In fact, all ASP.NET Core applications are self-hosted. Even in production, IIS/Nginx/Apache are a reverse proxy for the self-hosted application.

In a reasonably standard Program.cs class, you can see the self-hosting. The IISIntegration is optional - it's only necessary if you want to integrate with IIS.

public class Program
{
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var config = new ConfigurationBuilder()
            .AddCommandLine(args)
            .AddEnvironmentVariables(prefix: "ASPNETCORE_")
            .Build();

        var host = new WebHostBuilder()
            .UseConfiguration(config)
            .UseKestrel()
            .UseContentRoot(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory())
            .UseIISIntegration()
            .UseStartup<Startup>()
            .Build();

        host.Run();
    }
}