Integrating CKEditor 5 with .NET from ZIP

As a pure JavaScript/TypeScript application, the CKEditor 5 HTML editor will work inside any environment that supports such components. While we do not offer official integrations for any non-JavaScript frameworks, you can include a custom configuration of CKEditor 5 in a non-JS framework of your choice, for example, Microsoft’s .NET.

For the purpose of this guide, we will use a basic ASP.NET Core project created with dotnet new webapp. You can refer to the ASP.NET Core documentation to learn how to set up a project in the framework.

After downloading and unpacking the ZIP archive, copy the ckeditor5.js and ckeditor5.css files in the wwwroot/lib/ckeditor5/ directory. The folder structure of your app should resemble this one.

├── bin
├── obj
├── Pages
│   ├── Index.cshtml
│   └── ...
├── Properties
├── wwwroot
│   ├── css
│   ├── js
│   ├── lib
|      ├── bootstrap
|      ├── ckeditor5
|          ├── ckeditor5.js
|          └── ckeditor5.css
|      ├── jquery
|      ├── jquery-validation
|      ├── jquery-validation-unobtrusive
│   └── favicon.ico
├── appsettings.Development.json
├── appsettings.json
└── ...

Once you have all the dependencies of CKEditor 5, modify the Index.cshtml file in the Pages directory to import them. All the necessary markup is in the index.html file from the ZIP archive. You can copy and paste it into the <script> tag of your page. Pay attention to the paths of the import map and CSS link – they should reflect your folder structure. The template should look similar to the one below:

@page
@using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components
@{
    ViewData["Title"] = "Home Page";
    var data = new ImportMapDefinition(
    new Dictionary<string, string>
    {
        { "ckeditor5", "/lib/ckeditor5/ckeditor5.js" },
        { "ckeditor5/", "/lib/ckeditor5/" },
    }, null, null);
}
<link href="~/lib/ckeditor5/ckeditor5.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<div class="main-container">
    <div id="editor">
        <p>Hello from CKEditor 5!</p>
    </div>
</div>
<script type="importmap" asp-importmap="@data"></script>
<script type="module">
    import {
        ClassicEditor,
        Essentials,
        Paragraph,
        Bold,
        Italic,
        Font
    } from 'ckeditor5';

    ClassicEditor
        .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
            licenseKey: '<YOUR_LICENSE_KEY>', // Or 'GPL'.
            plugins: [ Essentials, Paragraph, Bold, Italic, Font ],
            toolbar: [
                'undo', 'redo', '|', 'bold', 'italic', '|',
                'fontSize', 'fontFamily', 'fontColor', 'fontBackgroundColor'
            ]
        } )
        .then( editor => {
            window.editor = editor;
        } )
        .catch( error => {
            console.error( error );
        } );
</script>

Finally, in the root directory of your .NET project, run dotnet watch run to see the app in action.

• See how to manipulate the editor’s data in the Getting and setting data guide.
• Refer to further guides in the setup section to see how to customize your editor further.
• Check the features category to learn more about individual features.