Ignite UI NuGet Package

Ignite UI Team / Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Ignite UI is available as a NuGet package since the release of version 2012.2. However, the package used to provide only a trial version of the Ignite UI product for the developers to explore and play with. It also contained a starting sample, demonstrating how different components can work together.

With the release of version 2016.2 we decided it’s time we have all our products as NuGet packages as well! The big news – Infragistics ASP.NET is now also available as a NuGet package! This means that you can have the desired Infragistics references in your project in no time and from there on NuGet will take care of restoring them for you.

Another great thing is that since the current release all the licensed users will be able to use the licensed versions of both Ignite UI and Infragistics ASP.NET through NuGet and will not be limited only to the trial versions! To make this important improvement, Infragistics has set up a private NuGet feed hosted on https://packages.infragistics.com/nuget/licensed. From there you will be able to get the latest version of the packages each time you create a new project or restore the packages of an existing one, guaranteeing that your project will always use the latest fixes and improvements done by Infragistics.

If you prefer to have the NuGet packages on your machine or if you don`t have a license and you just want to give Ignite UI or Infragistics ASP.NET a try you can install them locally by running the NuGet installer. The installer will automatically create a local feed named “Infragistics (Local)”, which will display all the NuGet packages that are available. During the installation if you leave the product key field empty, the installer will install the trial version of the packages. Have in mind that if you choose this way of working with the NuGet packages you will have to install a later version of the packages manually if you want to update the assemblies that you use to the latest version available.

If you are going to try the Trial version of Ignite UI, have in mind that a big part of Ignite UI is already open-source and available on GitHub!

Below we will walk through the both procedures of installing the NuGet packages – using the online private feed and using the local feed. We will use the Ignite UI package for this example but using the ASP.NET packages is following the same workflow. And if you don`t have experience with NuGet – don`t worry as this will be a step by step guide.

How to install the packages from the online private feed?

The first step is to add the Infragistics feed as a package source. To do that, you need to go to Tools/Options/Package Sources.

Add a new package source using Add new source button and name it Infragistics feed (in fact, this naming is not mandatory and you can name it however you want). Set the Source to https://packages.infragistics.com/nuget/licensed and click OK to save the source.

After that you have several ways to add references to the packages. The most "visual" way is to right click on the project and select "Manage Nuget Packages" .

Inside the NuGet packages manager dialog you will need to select "Infragistics feed" as your Package Source and you will get prompted for a user/password where you will need to use your infragistics.com credentials:

If you check the "Remember my password" checkbox the credentials will be stored and you will be able to manage them from the Windows Credential Manager. After you are logged in, you will get a list of all the packages that are available for installation. When you pick a package, you get the required assemblies installed in the project and the packages.config is updated with the installed packages.

How to install the packages from the local feed?

There are two ways to install the Ignite UI NuGet package to your project, using the GUI or using the console, and we will follow both procedures below.

First you need to create a new Web Application project.

In the next window you can select “Empty” project.

After clicking the “OK” button, a new empty project will be created and it will look like this:

At the moment, your project contains only the three default nodes: Properties, References and Web.config.

From this point on you can continue by using the GUI or the Package Manager Console.

If you prefer installing the packages via GUI, you should right-click on the project name and select Manage NuGet Packages… from the context menu.

This will open the Manage NuGet Packages view. In this view you can see all the packages that are available for you to use in your project.

Now you should change the package source to Infragistics (Local).

Navigate to the Browse tab and you will see the list of available Infragistics Ignite UI NuGet packages.

When you select a package, you will see more information of it in the right panel. The most important information in this panel is the list of dependencies for the selected package. Those are assemblies that will be installed automatically to your project and you don`t have to worry about those.

Click the Install button and the selected package will be added to your project.

However, if you prefer to use the Packages Manager Console, after your empty project is created navigate to Tools in the Visual Studio`s menu and after hovering NuGet Package Manager, select Package Manager Console.

The Package Manager Console will be shown at the bottom of the screen and you just need to enter “Install-Package name_of_the_package” to initiate the installation. For example, if you want to install “IgniteUI.MVC”, you must enter Install-Package IgniteUI.MVC and the manager will install this assembly and all the assemblies it depends on. Note that in the console you should select Infragistics(local) from the Package source drop down.

When the installation is finished, you will see a message in the Console that your package is successfully added to the project.

At this stage all the needed assemblies, JavaScript and CSS resources will be added to your project and you are ready to start creating high-performance, responsive apps.

Finally, the workflows for using the Ignite UI and ASP.NET packages are really similar but if you want to see how this step by step guide looks for the ASP.NET packages, you can check this help topic.