In this post we’ll explore setting up the popular ABP framework for .NET Core on a Mac with a Postgres database.

In case you’re unaware, the ABP framework offers a number of out of the box features that can save a tremendous amount of time when starting a new web application. This includes a strong and opinionated architecture based on domain driven design, as well as multi-tenancy, theming and more.

Getting your environment setup

In this post we’ll explore getting the basic ABP app with Blazor up and running on a Mac.

Firstly, if you haven’t already done so download and install the latest .NET Core 5 SDK from Microsoft’s site.

Once installed you’ll want to add the ABP command line tools. These will allow you to quickly scaffold projects and code. This can be installed by opening the Terminal.app on your Mac, and running this line of code:

dotnet tool install -g Volo.Abp.Cli

If you’re running a more recent version of macOS - such as Big Sur - you’ll now be using ZSH by default instead of Bash in the Terminal app.

Try running the command abp --help. If you get a message stating that abp is not a known command, you may need to create a .zshrc file to allow you to access the ABP CLI from ZSH. Within Terminal, run the following commands:

  1. vi ~/.zshrc
  2. Paste export PATH=$HOME/.dotnet/tools:$PATH
  3. Run the command :wq to write the file to disk and quit
  4. Restart Terminal.app and you should be able to run abp --help

Creating the ABP project

Create a new folder called ToDoProject. Navigate to it from within Terminal, and run the following command:

abp new TodoApp -u blazor-server

This creates a new .NET Core solution based on the ABP framework.

If you’re on a Windows machine, normally you would now run the DbMigrator project to setup your database tables. However by default the ABP project uses LocalDB which is unavailable on the Mac.

As an alternative, you can use Postgres which IS available for the Mac.

The easiest way to install Postgres is to download and install the Postgres.app for free. Once launched, you can then install an app like Postico or use the command line to create a new Postgres database.

If using Postico, connect to your localhost Postgres server either via the server settings within Postico, or by double clicking the server from within the Postgres app.

Then, navigate to your server within Postico by clicking localhost in the top navigation bar. Click “+ Database” and add a new database called todoapp.

Click these buttons to setup the new database

Now we need to make some changes to the sample ABP app. Open the TodoApp.sln in your editor of choice (for the Mac this can include Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio Code or Rider).

Next replace the SQL package with Postgres. Add the [Volo.Abp.EntityFrameworkCore.PostgreSql](https://www.nuget.org/packages/Volo.Abp.EntityFrameworkCore.PostgreSql) package via Nuget, and remove Volo.Abp.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer.

Then follow the rest of the steps in this article to update your project files to use the new Postgres package.

Lastly you’ll need to update the connection strings for your database.

Open src/TodoApp.Blazor/appsettings.json and update the following line to connect to your Postgres database, updating `` with your database username (for a Mac this is normally your Mac login username, unless you’ve specified a new user):

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"ConnectionStrings": {
  "Default": "Server=localhost;Port=5432;Database=todoapp;User Id=<your username>/;Password="
}

Similarly, open src/TodoApp.DbMigrator/appsettings.json and update the same connection string:

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"ConnectionStrings": {
  "Default": "Server=localhost;Port=5432;Database=todoapp;User Id=<your username>/;Password="
}

From within your IDE you should now be able to build and run your app, or from the Terminal app run dotnet run to see your first ABP web app running!