BrowserLink tooling doesn't work with ASP.NET Core 2.1?

Question

Since upgrading to ASP.NET Core 2.1 inside Visual Studio 2017 BrowserLink no longer works. If I use the base "ASP.NET Core Web Application" template, choosing to target ASP.NET Core 2.0 BrowserLink functions perfectly, but if you choose ASP.NET Core 2.1 it doesn't work at all.

"Enable Browser Link" is ticked and I've tried with/without the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.BrowserLink package, upon compiling / launching the web app everything works except browser link. No code is injected into the page and the browser link dashboard remains empty.

Has anyone managed to get Browser Link working with ASP.NET Core 2.1?

Answer 1

I had similar problem after upgrading to ASPNET Core 2.1. To solve the problem, I have uninstalled the Visual Studio extension I had installed, and then installed the following package via PM:

Install-Package Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.BrowserLink -Version 2.2.0

After that, I added the command

 if (env.IsDevelopment())
      {
        app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
        app.UseBrowserLink();
}

and it started working back!

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

if you use Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 2.2.1, you should add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.BrowserLink -Version 2.1.1

---

if you use Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.BrowserLink -Version 2.2.0, you will get error

after you setup install nuget package, don't forget rebuild

Answer 3

Turns out it was Visual Studio intellisense being wrong.

I added the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.BrowserLink nuget package but visual studio still underlined app.UseBrowserLink() as undefined. Added using Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.BrowserLink which VS also underlined as unknown reference, but in fact despite VS underlining it as an error it compiles fine and now BrowserLink works.