How to know which functions are used and which can I use (reverse engineering) in ASP.net core

Question

I'm completely new using ASP.net core. I've read the "base notion" on the MSDN website and I'm currently following this tutorial https://docs.microsoft.com/fr-fr/aspnet/core/tutorials/razor-pages/?view=aspnetcore-3.0

Usually when I try to understand the workflow of a program, the VS code lens and autocompletion help me a lot. Unfortunately in ASP.net it seems that all the functions are called via external code and then code lens does not reference those functions. For example, in the class Startup :

But they are called during runtime (even with the stacktrace I cannot get the functions that called those methods). Unfortunately the names are strongly typed so if I use ConfigServices instead of ConfigureServices, the method is obviously not called. I thought that the Microsoft developers would have created an interface that gathered all those methods. Because at the time being I'm completely lost. Indeed it's even harder to understand something when parts that you are looking for are not glued together:/. Following the tutorial is OK but if I want to write code myself I will probably not find the functions I'll need and in the end I'll end up with poor code because of my not understanding.

My question is then: Where can I find the entire flow of ASP.net? Which documentation should I read? Where are all those functions called? Is there a way to get all the workflow in VS2019?

Maybe my approach to understand how asp.net works is not the correct one. Which method/tutorials/doc should I use?

Thank you:)

Answer 1

Documentation

You could start with the Overview from ASP.NET Core fundamentals which is the first of pages that cover how elements of ASP.NET Core work.

The page actually start with the startup class, but the 2nd page in the series, App startup in ASP.NET Core , covers it with even more detail.

Under the hood

If you want to look under the hood then you're in luck ASP.Core is Open Source - the repo is here

You can also browse the .NET Core Source Browser .