Run it locally

There are two ready-made environments. local is for dotnet run: sample data on, logs to the console. docker is for Docker Compose: sample data on, logs to Seq, database on a volume. Both are for your machine. Neither is for production, which is why neither is the default.

Run it

dotnet run --project ./src/Presentation

launchSettings.json sets the environment to local and listens on http://localhost:5032 and https://localhost:7032.

docker compose up -d --build

Compose builds the run stage, starts Seq next to it and publishes the API on http://localhost:8080. Shut it down with docker compose down, or docker compose down -v to drop the database too.

docker build . --target run --tag acme-movies:local
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 -e DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT=docker acme-movies:local

Without Compose there’s no Seq, so the Serilog sink in appsettings.docker.json has nowhere to send the logs. Swap it for Console if you run the image on its own.

Find your way around

Where	What
`/graphql`	The endpoint. `POST` a query, or open it in a browser for Nitro
`/graphql?sdl`	The schema in SDL, the same text the snapshot test checks
`/health/live`	Answers 200 while the process is up
`/health/ready`	Answers 200 when the database can be reached
http://localhost:5341	Seq, when running with Docker Compose

The health endpoints answer without a token even when authentication is on, so a load balancer never needs to log in.

Try the schema

Nitro is the easy way: it knows the schema, autocompletes, and keeps your query history. The sample data uses a fixed seed, so these ids are the same on every machine. See the schema reference for every query, mutation and type.

# One movie, its reviews and who wrote them
{
  movie(id: "e159975e-4e6a-1ffd-713e-1eb9d8d4a593") {
    title
    reviews { stars author { firstName lastName } }
  }
}

# Write a review
mutation {
  createReview(input: { authorId: "01fa8b58-05d2-abd4-e55c-2633222dd0a5", movieId: "e159975e-4e6a-1ffd-713e-1eb9d8d4a593", stars: 5 }) {
    id
    stars
  }
}

Run the tests

dotnet test

Each test class builds its own in-memory SQLite database from the migrations and the same fixed seed. No test can change what another one sees, and nothing touches movie-reviews.db. One of the tests compares /graphql?sdl with tests/Presentation.Tests.Integration/GraphQL/Schema/schema.graphql, so a schema change you didn’t mean to make fails the build before anyone’s client notices.

Run just one part of the Dockerfile

The Dockerfile has a stage for each job, so you can build only what you need.

Stage	What it does
`build`	Restores and builds the solution
`test`	Runs every test with coverage
`coverage`	Exports the coverage report to your machine
`publish`	Publishes the Presentation project
`run`	The image you deploy

docker build . --target coverage --output type=local,dest=out

Stamp a version

docker build . --target run --tag acme-movies:latest \
  --build-arg VERSION_PREFIX=1.2.3 --build-arg VERSION_SUFFIX=beta

The version query then reports 1.2.3-beta and the commit it was built from.