Azure Service Fabric SDK 2.6.210 Missing Stateless Web API Template on Visual Studio 2017?

Question

I installed the latest 2.6.210 SDK / 5.6.210 Runtime for Service Fabric on my development PC using Visual Studio 2017 and now when I choose to create a new Cloud solution the "Stateless Web API" template is gone. I've also noticed that the "Stateless ASP.NET Core" template is no longer marked as "Pending".

I believe I can manually create the boilerplate to host a Web API service using Owin and .NET Framework using the "Stateless Service" template but why did they remove the much simpler "Stateless Web API" template that did all that for you?

I can't find any documentation from Microsoft explaining why this template would be missing.

Is Microsoft trying to get people to avoid using the .NET Framework in Service Fabric for Web API services because .NET Core ASP is no longer in preview?

Is it just a bug and if so how do I get that template back?

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can give me.

Answer 1

The OWIN based template was only available self-hosted web framework for .NET until ASP.NET Core and .NET Core tooling in Visual Studio 2017 was release in General Availability.

Since Service Fabric cannot use IIS for hosting web services, we recommend using ASP.NET Core and provide templates in Visual Studio which integrates Service Fabric Reliable Services and ASP.NET Core Templates for MVC and Web API.

Remember you can still build your ASP.NET Core services with .NET Framework as the target and use all of .NET Framework from an ASP.NET Core Service.

Visual Studio tooling still supports the OWIN based services, and they can still run in Service Fabric.

See also here: Using WebListener or OWIN as API Gateway for azure service fabric and here for info for ASP.NET support in Service Fabric https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-reliable-services-communication-aspnetcore