What Is Oqtane, and Why Should You Use It?

Oqtane, built using Microsoft’s Blazor technology, is a web application framework that automates the overhead in creating web applications. It allows you to deploy and run modules written in Blazor. It provides a dynamic web experience that can be run as client-side Blazor or as server-side Blazor.

It is a platform for hosting multiple Blazor applications, not just developing a single application. When you have a website that requires multiple types of functionality, such as forums, blogs, and content management, Oqtane can provide this.

Oqtane is open source (using the MIT license).

Oqtane features

Oqtane has several features, including:

• Multitenant: The ability to run multiple sites, each having its own database, on a single Oqtane installation.
• Custom themes: Customizable and easy-to-install styling for the Oqtane installation.
• Modular framework: Provides a clean separation between your custom module functionality and the underlying framework. This allows you to upgrade the underlying framework and other custom modules without breaking the other parts.
• Granular permissions: An Oqtane installation is composed of pages that contain modules contained in module instances. Granular permissions allow for view and edit permissions to be applied at the page level and the module-instance level.

Custom modules

The Oqtane modular framework allows you to create or download and install custom modules. With custom modules, you only write "functionality-specific" code, not the entire website.

In this book, we will create a Help Desk custom module.