Blazor Blog Project

Live demo: https://blog.unrealbg.com/

Overview

Welcome to the Blazor Blog Project! This repository hosts a modern, responsive blog application, built using the latest Blazor Web App template. Our goal is to leverage Blazor's capabilities to deliver fast and interactive user interfaces, ensuring an engaging and seamless experience for our users.

Features

• Blazor Web App (Server render mode)
• Responsive Design
• Interactive UI with QuickGrid for admin tables
• Identity (cookie auth) with seeded Admin user
• Rich text editor for posts (Blazored.TextEditor / Quill)
• Auto-apply EF Core migrations and data seeding on startup
• Serilog logging (console + rolling files)
• Health endpoint: GET /health
• In-memory caching for public lists (2 min TTL) with automatic cache bust on admin changes
• HTML sanitization for user content (Ganss.Xss)
• Server-side validation with FluentValidation

Screenshots

Updated screenshots showcasing the current UI.

1) Home – Hero

The landing page hero with tag badges and primary CTAs.

2) Home – Latest Posts

The Latest Posts section on the homepage and the footer navigation.

3) All Posts

A full list of articles with sidebar: Subscribe, Popular Posts, and Categories.

4) Post Details

Single post view with title, metadata, author, and cover image.

5) Post – Footer & Subscribe

Post footer with share actions and newsletter subscribe form.

6) Category – Featured Card

Category page highlighting a featured article with a large card preview.

7) Tag Page – Latest & Subscribe

Tag page (e.g., #javascript) with latest posts and a subscribe form.

8) Login

Login screen with email, password, “Remember me,” and “Forgot password?” link.

9) Admin – Dashboard

Admin console overview with quick actions for categories, posts, and subscribers.

10) Admin – Manage Categories

Category management table with name, slug, navbar visibility, and Edit/Delete actions.

Architecture

This solution follows Clean Architecture:

• Domain: Core entities and business rules with no dependencies.
• Application: Use cases, contracts, and validators; depends only on Domain.
• Infrastructure: EF Core persistence, Identity, and service implementations; depends on Application.
• Web (BlazorBlog): UI; depends on Application and Infrastructure.

Data and Identity live under BlazorBlog.Infrastructure.Persistence (single ApplicationDbContext and ApplicationUser). UI helpers use Application abstractions (e.g., IToastService) implemented in Infrastructure.

Projects (solution structure)

• BlazorBlog (UI)
• BlazorBlog.Infrastructure (EF Core, Identity, seeding, data services)
• BlazorBlog.Application (view models, validators, contracts)
• BlazorBlog.Domain (entities)
• BlazorBlog.Tests (xUnit + bUnit)

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• .NET 9 SDK
• Recommended: Visual Studio 2022 (latest) with ASP.NET workload
• SQL Server (default is (localdb)\\MSSQLLocalDB). Change the connection string if needed
• Node.js 18+ (LTS) if you plan to run the Tailwind CSS watcher during development or rely on the publish-time CSS build

Configuration

Update the connection string and Admin user settings in BlazorBlog/appsettings.json:

{
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "DefaultConnection": "Server=(localdb)\\MSSQLLocalDB;Database=BlazorBlog;Trusted_Connection=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=true;Encrypt=False;"
  },
  "AdminUser": {
    "Name": "Admin",
    "Email": "admin@bblog.com",
    "Password": "Admin@123",
    "Role": "Admin"
  }
}

Run the application

From the repository root:

# Runs the UI project
dotnet run --project BlazorBlog/BlazorBlog.csproj

CSS development (Tailwind)

• One-time setup (inside BlazorBlog/):

npm ci

• Watch and rebuild CSS during development (run in a separate terminal from BlazorBlog/):

npm run dev:css

• Build CSS once (e.g., CI/local without watcher):

npm run build:css

Notes:

• On publish, CSS is built automatically by an MSBuild target that runs npx tailwindcss (requires Node.js installed on the machine).
• The generated stylesheet is BlazorBlog/wwwroot/app.css.

First run behavior

• Pending EF Core migrations are applied automatically on startup
• Initial data is seeded via ISeedService (Admin role/user + default categories)

Optional: You can still apply migrations manually with dotnet ef database update, but it's not required for local runs.

Authentication and Admin user

• Cookie authentication using ASP.NET Core Identity
• Login page: /Account/Login
• Default Admin credentials (change in appsettings before first run):
  • Email: admin@bblog.com
  • Password: Admin@123

Admin area

Admin-only pages (require the Admin role):

• /admin/dashboard
• /admin/manage-blog-posts (+ create/edit pages)
• /admin/manage-categories
• /admin/manage-subscribers

Forgot/Reset password

• Pages:
  • /Account/ForgotPassword
  • /Account/ResetPassword?email=...&code=...
• Email sending uses IEmailSender<ApplicationUser>. The default is a no-op sender for local development
• Development helper: In Development the Forgot Password page displays a 'Development only' section with the generated reset link and token for easy local testing

Health endpoint

• GET /health returns { status, timeUtc }

Logging

• Serilog configured via appsettings.json
• Console + rolling file logs in Logs/log-*.txt

Tests

• Run tests from the repo root:

 dotnet test

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open-source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/NewFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m "Add some NewFeature")
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/NewFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt for more information.

Contact

Zhelyazko Zhelyazkov - admin@unrealbg.com