.NET Console Application Template

A small starter template for building modern .NET console applications.

This repository provides a minimal, well-structured console application that demonstrates common patterns used in production-ready tools such as dependency injection, configuration handling, environment variable loading, and console output formatting.

Purpose

Use this project as a starting point when creating new .NET console applications. It includes examples of wiring up services, reading required configuration values, and writing formatted output to the console.

Key Features

• Target framework: .NET 10
• Dependency injection with Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection
• Configuration support with Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration
• Helper extension ConfigurationExtensions.GetRequiredValue that throws a typed ConfigurationException when a required configuration key is missing
• Environment variable loader (DotEnv.Load) that reads a .env file
• Console output using Spectre.Console for rich formatting
• Unit tests using NUnit and Shouldly

Requirements

• .NET 10 SDK

Quickstart

1. Clone the repository.

2. Set any required configuration values as environment variables or in a .env file at the project root. Example .env contents:

   TEMP_FOLDER=/tmp
   

3. Build and run the application from the ConsoleTemplate project directory:

   dotnet build
   dotnet run --project ConsoleTemplate/ConsoleTemplate.csproj
   

   If a required configuration key is missing, the application will display a helpful error indicating which key is not set.

Running Tests

Run the unit tests from the solution root:

dotnet test

Contributing

This project is intended as a simple template. Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests to improve examples or add features.