Retail Monolith App

A lightweight ASP.NET Core 9 Razor Pages application that simulates a retail monolith before decomposition.
It includes product listing, shopping cart, checkout, and inventory management — built to demonstrate modernisation and refactoring patterns.

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Features

• ASP.NET Core 9 (Razor Pages)
• Entity Framework Core (SQL Server LocalDB)
• Dependency Injection with modular services:
  • CartService
  • CheckoutService
  • MockPaymentGateway
• 50 sample seeded products with random inventory
• End-to-end retail flow:
  • Products → Cart → Checkout → Orders
• Minimal APIs:
  • POST /api/checkout
  • GET /api/orders/{id}
• Health-check endpoint at /health
• NEW: Dummy data generation for testing (DEV/QA only)
  • POST /api/admin/generate-dummy-data?count={number} - Generate test orders
  • DELETE /api/admin/cleanup-dummy-data - Remove test data
  • See DUMMY_DATA_GENERATION.md for details
• Ready for decomposition into microservices

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🏠 Home Page

🛍 Products

🧺 Cart

💳 Checkout

📦 Orders

📦 Order Details

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Development Setup

You can run and edit this application in three different ways:

1. Local Development Environment

Run the application directly on your local machine with your preferred IDE or editor.

Prerequisites:

• .NET 9 SDK installed (download)
• SQL Server LocalDB (included with Visual Studio) or SQL Server instance
• Your favorite code editor (Visual Studio, VS Code, Rider, etc.)

Steps:

git clone https://github.com/lavann/ads_monotlith_app.git
cd ads_monotlith_app
dotnet restore
dotnet ef database update
dotnet run

2. Docker-Hosted Dev Container

Use a Docker container with a pre-configured development environment. This ensures consistency across different machines without installing dependencies locally.

Prerequisites:

• Docker Desktop installed and running
• Visual Studio Code with the Dev Containers extension

Steps:

1. Clone the repository
2. Open the folder in VS Code
3. When prompted, click "Reopen in Container" (or use Command Palette: Dev Containers: Reopen in Container)
4. VS Code will build and start the dev container with all dependencies pre-installed
5. Run dotnet ef database update and dotnet run inside the container terminal

3. GitHub Codespaces

Develop entirely in the cloud with zero local setup. Codespaces provides a full VS Code environment in your browser.

Prerequisites:

• GitHub account with Codespaces access

Steps:

1. Navigate to the repository on GitHub
2. Click the green "Code" button
3. Select the "Codespaces" tab
4. Click "Create codespace on main"
5. Wait for the environment to initialize
6. Run dotnet ef database update and dotnet run in the integrated terminal

All three environments provide the same development experience with the .NET SDK, C# extension, and all necessary tools pre-configured.

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Database & Migrations

Apply existing migrations

dotnet ef database update

Create a new migration

• If you modify models:

  • dotnet ef migrations add <MigrationName>
  • dotnet ef database update

• EF Core uses DesignTimeDbContextFactory (Data/DesignTimeDbContextFactory.cs) with the connection string:

  • Server=(localdb)\MSSQLLocalDB;Database=RetailMonolith;Trusted_Connection=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=true

Seeding Sample Data

At startup, the app automatically runs await AppDbContext.SeedAsync(db); which seeds 50 sample products with random categories, prices, and inventory.

To reseed manually:

dotnet ef database drop -f
dotnet ef database update
dotnet run

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Running the Application

Start the application:

dotnet run

Access the app at https://localhost:5001 or http://localhost:5000.

Available Endpoints

Path	Description
/	Home Page
/Products	Product catalogue
/Cart	Shopping cart
/api/checkout	Checkout API
/api/orders/{id}	Order details API
/health	Health check endpoint

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Environment Variables (optional)

You can override the default connection string by setting the ConnectionStrings__DefaultConnection environment variable.

Required Environment Variables for Azure Services

The application uses Azure Cognitive Search and Azure OpenAI services. These credentials must be configured as environment variables for the application to function properly:

Variable	Description	Required
AZURE_SEARCH_ENDPOINT	Azure Cognitive Search service endpoint	Yes*
AZURE_SEARCH_API_KEY	Azure Cognitive Search API key	Yes*
AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT	Azure OpenAI service endpoint	Yes*
AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY	Azure OpenAI service API key	Yes*
ConnectionStrings__DefaultConnection	Database connection string	No
ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT	Environment mode	No

* Required only if you plan to use Azure Search or Azure OpenAI features (chat assistant, product search).

Setting Environment Variables

For Local Development

Linux/macOS:

export AZURE_SEARCH_ENDPOINT="https://your-search-service.search.windows.net"
export AZURE_SEARCH_API_KEY="your-search-api-key"
export AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT="https://your-openai-service.openai.azure.com/"
export AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY="your-openai-api-key"

Windows (Command Prompt):

set AZURE_SEARCH_ENDPOINT=https://your-search-service.search.windows.net
set AZURE_SEARCH_API_KEY=your-search-api-key
set AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT=https://your-openai-service.openai.azure.com/
set AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY=your-openai-api-key

Windows (PowerShell):

$env:AZURE_SEARCH_ENDPOINT="https://your-search-service.search.windows.net"
$env:AZURE_SEARCH_API_KEY="your-search-api-key"
$env:AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT="https://your-openai-service.openai.azure.com/"
$env:AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY="your-openai-api-key"

For GitHub Codespaces

GitHub Codespaces automatically provides access to repository secrets as environment variables. To configure:

1. Navigate to your repository on GitHub
2. Go to Settings → Secrets and variables → Codespaces (not Actions!)
3. Add the following secrets:
   • AZURE_SEARCH_ENDPOINT
   • AZURE_SEARCH_API_KEY
   • AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT
   • AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY

Important: Make sure to add secrets under the Codespaces tab, not the Actions tab. Codespaces secrets are separate from Actions secrets.

These secrets will be automatically available as environment variables when you create or restart a Codespace.

For Docker/Dev Containers

Create a .env file in the root directory (this file is git-ignored):

AZURE_SEARCH_ENDPOINT=https://your-search-service.search.windows.net
AZURE_SEARCH_API_KEY=your-search-api-key
AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT=https://your-openai-service.openai.azure.com/
AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY=your-openai-api-key

Then update docker-compose.yml or .devcontainer/devcontainer.json to load these variables.

Note: Never commit the .env file or any files containing API keys to source control.