.NET Aspire Dashboard - The mystery of the hidden endpoint

One of the cool features of .NET Aspire is the Aspire Dashboard(also available standalone by the way). It allows you to closely track various aspects of your app and its resources, including logs, traces, and environment configurations, in real-time.

After migrating an existing solution to .NET Aspire, I noticed that no URL was shown for some of the endpoints:

I couldn’t find a direct reason why this was the case, but I found online that it could be related to the launchsettings.json files.

Here is the launchsettings.json file for the ‘api’ project (where the endpoint URL is shown):

	{
	"$schema": "https://json.schemastore.org/launchsettings.json",
	"iisSettings": {
	"windowsAuthentication": false,
	"anonymousAuthentication": true,
	"iisExpress": {
	"applicationUrl": "http://localhost:62265",
	"sslPort": 44393
	}
	},
	"profiles": {
	"MinimalAPI.Example": {
	"commandName": "Project",
	"dotnetRunMessages": true,
	"launchBrowser": true,
	"launchUrl": "swagger",
	"applicationUrl": "https://localhost:7284;http://localhost:5284",
	"environmentVariables": {
	"ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
	}
	},
	"IIS Express": {
	"commandName": "IISExpress",
	"launchBrowser": true,
	"launchUrl": "swagger",
	"environmentVariables": {
	"ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
	}
	}
	}
	}

view raw launchsettings.json hosted with ❤ by GitHub

And here is the launchsettings.json file the for the ‘webapp’ project (where no endpoint is shown):

	{
	"profiles": {
	"IIS Express": {
	"commandName": "IISExpress",
	"launchBrowser": true,
	"environmentVariables": {
	"ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
	}
	},
	"eShopExample": {
	"commandName": "Project",
	"launchBrowser": true,
	"environmentVariables": {
	"ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
	},
	"authenticationMode": "Windows",
	"applicationUrl": "http://localhost:42441/"
	}
	},
	"iisSettings": {
	"windowsAuthentication": true,
	"anonymousAuthentication": false,
	"iisExpress": {
	"applicationUrl": "http://localhost:42440/",
	"sslPort": 44327
	}
	}
	}

view raw launchsettings.json hosted with ❤ by GitHub

With some trial and error, I found that the order of the profiles in the launchsettings.json file matters and that Aspire will use the first profile found. I switched the profiles for the ‘webapp’ project:

	{
	"profiles": {
	"eShopExample": {
	"commandName": "Project",
	"dotnetRunMessages": true,
	"launchBrowser": true,
	"environmentVariables": {
	"ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
	},
	"authenticationMode": "Windows",
	"applicationUrl": "https://localhost:44372;http://localhost:42441/"
	},
	"IIS Express": {
	"commandName": "IISExpress",
	"launchBrowser": true,
	"environmentVariables": {
	"ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
	}
	}
	},
	"iisSettings": {
	"windowsAuthentication": true,
	"anonymousAuthentication": false,
	"iisExpress": {
	"applicationUrl": "http://localhost:42440/",
	"sslPort": 44327
	}
	}
	}