BlazorPluginComponents — Dynamic plugin architecture for Blazor

BlazorPluginComponents is a demonstration project showing how to dynamically load Razor Class Library (RCL) components in a Blazor Server application without registering them at compile time. Load components and full pages as runtime plugins — no project reference needed.

✨ Features

• Dynamic component loading — Load RCL components at runtime from DLL/assets without a project dependency
• 4 loading strategies — Standard project reference, folder-based loading, manual file upload, and NuGet Package (Module Manager)
• Module Manager — Upload a .nupkg file once; the server caches it and serves the component on demand
• Dynamic page loading — Load entire Blazor pages dynamically through the Module Manager
• Blazor Server — Works with Blazor Server (hosted model)

🏗️ Architecture

A Razor Class Library (RCL) published via dotnet publish or dotnet pack produces:

Artifact	Description
*.dll + *.pdb	Assembly and debug symbols
wwwroot/ assets	Isolated CSS, JavaScript, images
*.nupkg	All-in-one NuGet package (via dotnet pack)

The project demonstrates 4 ways to consume these artifacts at runtime:

1. Standard — Project reference (compile-time, for baseline comparison)
2. Folder-based — Copy RCL files to a folder under wwwroot, load dynamically
3. Manual upload — Upload DLL + assets via the app's UI
4. Module Manager — Upload the .nupkg once, the server extracts and caches everything

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• .NET 6+ SDK
• Git

Setup

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/phmatray/BlazorPluginComponents.git
cd BlazorPluginComponents

# Build RazorClassLibrary2 first (post-build step copies assets to Server/wwwroot)
dotnet build RazorClassLibrary2/RazorClassLibrary2.csproj

# Run the server
dotnet run --project Server/BlazorPlugin2.Server.csproj

⚠️ Build RazorClassLibrary2 before the server project — its post-build command copies component assets to Server/wwwroot. Skipping this step will cause a runtime error.

Demo

Dynamic component loading from an RCL folder:

Dynamic page loading via Module Manager:

📖 Documentation

Explore each project in the solution to understand each loading strategy:

Project	Strategy
RazorClassLibrary1	Standard (compile-time reference)
RazorClassLibrary2	Folder-based (post-build copy)
RazorClassLibrary3	Manual upload / Module Manager
Server	Host application

🤝 Contributing

Pull requests welcome. Fork the repo, create a branch from master, and open a PR. For large changes, open an issue first.

📄 License

MIT — see LICENSE