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Set up a local development environment for Temporal and .NET

Temporal .NET SDK

To follow the .NET SDK tutorials and build your own Temporal applications, you'll need the .NET SDK and a Temporal Server.

Install .NET

The .NET SDK requires .NET 6.0 or later.

Install .NET by following the official .NET instructions.

Install the Temporal .NET SDK

If you don't already have a .NET project, create one by running the following command:

dotnet new console -o temporaldotnet

Switch to the new directory for your project:

cd temporaldotnet

Then, install the Temporal .NET SDK:

dotnet add package Temporalio

Next, you'll configure a local Temporal Service for development.

Set up a local Temporal Service for development with Temporal CLI

The fastest way to get a development version of the Temporal Service running on your local machine is to use Temporal CLI.

Temporal CLI is a tool for interacting with the Temporal Service from the command-line interface. It includes a self-contained distribution of the Temporal Service and Web UI as well which you can use for local development.

Install Temporal CLI on your local machine using the following instructions for your platform.

Temporal CLI Version

We recommend Temporal CLI version 0.11.0 for our courses and tutorials.

To install Temporal CLI, download the version for your architecture:

Once you've downloaded the file, extract the downloaded archive and add the temporal binary to your PATH by copying it to a directory like /usr/local/bin.

Once you've installed Temporal CLI and added it to your PATH, open a new Terminal window and run the following command:

temporal server start-dev

This command starts a local Temporal Service. It starts the Web UI, creates the default Namespace, and uses an in-memory database.

  • The Temporal Service will be available on localhost:7233.
  • The Temporal Web UI will be available at http://localhost:8233.

Leave the local Temporal Service running as you work through tutorials and other projects. You can stop the Temporal Service at any time by pressing CTRL+C.

Change the Web UI port

The Temporal Web UI may be on a different port in some examples or tutorials. To change the port for the Web UI, use the --ui-port option when starting the server:

temporal server start-dev --ui-port 8080

The Temporal Web UI will now be available at http://localhost:8080.

The temporal server start-dev command uses an in-memory database, so stopping the server will erase all your Workflows and all your Task Queues. If you want to retain those between runs, start the server and specify a database filename using the --db-filename option, like this:

temporal server start-dev --db-filename your_temporal.db

When you stop and restart the Temporal Service and specify the same filename again, your Workflows and other information will be available.

Once you have everything installed, you're ready to build apps with Temporal on your local machine.