Get started with the NATS integration

NATS is a simple, secure and high-performance open-source messaging system for cloud-native applications, IoT messaging, and microservices architectures. The Aspire NATS integration provides a way to connect to existing NATS instances or create new instances from Aspire with the docker.io/library/nats container image.

In this introduction, you'll see how to install and use the Aspire NATS integrations in a simple configuration. If you already have this knowledge, see NATS hosting integration for full reference details.

Note

To follow this guide, you must have created an Aspire solution to work with. To learn how to do that, see Build your first Aspire app.

Set up hosting integration

To begin, install the Aspire NATS hosting integration in your Aspire AppHost project:

Install the NuGet package

dotnet add package Aspire.Hosting.Nats

Next, in the AppHost project, create instances of NATS resources and pass them to the consuming client projects:

var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
  
var nats = builder.AddNats("nats");
  
builder.AddProject<Projects.ExampleProject>()
       .WithReference(nats);
  
builder.Build().Run();

Set up client integration

To get started with the Aspire NATS client integration, install the package:

Install the NuGet package

dotnet add package Aspire.NATS.Net

In the Program.cs file of your client-consuming project, call the AddNatsClient extension method to register an INatsConnection for use through dependency injection:

builder.AddNatsClient(connectionName: "nats");

You can then retrieve the INatsConnection instance using dependency injection:

public class ExampleService(INatsConnection connection)
{
    // Use connection...
}

Get started with the NATS integration

Set up hosting integration

Set up client integration

See also