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

dotnet run --project ./src/Presentation

launchSettings.json sets the environment to local and listens on http://localhost:8080 and https://localhost:8081.

Docker Compose

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

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
/scalar	The Scalar API reference, built from the OpenAPI document
/openapi/v1.json	The OpenAPI document itself
/health/live	Answers 200 while the process is up
/health/ready	Answers 200 when the database can be reached
/api/version	The version stamped into the build
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 endpoints

The sample data uses a fixed seed, so these ids are the same on every machine. See the endpoint reference for every parameter and response.

# Search movies, two at a time
curl "http://localhost:8080/api/movies?query=global&limit=2"

# One movie, with its reviews
curl "http://localhost:8080/api/movies/e159975e-4e6a-1ffd-713e-1eb9d8d4a593"

# Write a review
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8080/api/reviews" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"authorId":"01fa8b58-05d2-abd4-e55c-2633222dd0a5","movieId":"e159975e-4e6a-1ffd-713e-1eb9d8d4a593","stars":5}'

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.

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

GET /api/version then reports 1.2.3-beta and the commit it was built from.

Stuck?

If the first request takes a moment, the API is applying migrations and seeding. If curl says connection refused, check that port 8080 isn’t busy with something else you forgot about.