With Plugin Framework for .NET Core, everything is a plugin! Plugin Framework is a plugin platform for .NET Core applications, including ASP.NET Core, Blazor, WPF, Windows Forms and Console apps. It is light-weight and easy to integrate and supports multiple different plugin catalogs, including .NET assemblies, Nuget packages and Roslyn scripts.

Here are some of the main features of Plugin Framework:

• Everything is a plugin! Deliver plugins as Nuget-packages, .NET assemblies, Roslyn scripts and more.
• Easy integration into a new or an existing .NET Core application.
• Automatic dependency management.
• MIT-licensed, commercial support available.

Plugin Framework is available from Nuget as a .NET Core 3.1 package. There's a separate package which makes it easier to work with plugins in an ASP.NET Core app:

Install-Package Weikio.PluginFramework.AspNetCore 

Using Plugin Framework can be as easy as adding a single new line into ConfigureServices:

services.AddPluginFramework<IOperator>(@".\myplugins"); 

The code finds all the plugins (types that implement the custom IOperator-interface) from the myplugins-folder. The plugins can be used in a controller using constructor injection:

public CalculatorController(IEnumerable<IOperator> operator) {	_operators = operators; } 

Alternatively, you can provide multiple plugin locations using catalogs:

var folderPluginCatalog = new FolderPluginCatalog(@".\myplugins", type => { type.Implements<IOperator>(); }); var anotherPluginCatalog = new FolderPluginCatalog(@".\morePlugins", type => { type.Implements<IOperator>(); }); services.AddPluginFramework() .AddPluginCatalog(folderPluginCatalog) .AddPluginCatalog(anotherPluginCatalog) .AddPluginType<IOperator>(); 

Plugin Framework contains a concept called "Catalog". A single assembly can be a catalog. A .NET type can be a catalog. Folders with dlls are often used as catalogs and Plugin Framework also supports Nuget packages, Nuget feeds and Roslyn scripts as Plugin catalogs. Multiple catalogs are often combined into a singe Composite catalog.

Each catalog contains 0-n plugins.

Plugin Framework provides the following officially supported catalogs:

• Type
• Assembly
• Folder
• Delegate (Action or a Func)
• Roslyn script
• Nuget package
• Nuget feed

Source code for Plugin Framework is available from GitHub.

Commercial support for Plugin Framework is provided by Adafy.

Adafy is a Finnish software development house, focusing on Microsoft technologies.

Plugin Framework is available as an open source, MIT-licensed project.