Nuget.Packaging

NuGet.Packaging is a NuGet client SDK library that provides a set of APIs to interact with .nupkg and .nuspec files from a stream. It provides a way for developers to create and read packages and work with the package metadata.

Usage

It is strongly recommended that NuGet packages are created using the official NuGet tooling and instead of this low-level API. There are a variety of characteristics important for a well-formed package and the latest version of tooling helps incorporate these best practices.

For more information about creating NuGet packages, see the overview of the package creation workflow and the documentation for official pack tooling (for example, using the dotnet CLI).

Examples

Create a package

Create a package, set metadata, and add dependencies.

PackageBuilder builder = new PackageBuilder();
builder.Id = "MyPackage";
builder.Version = new NuGetVersion("1.0.0-beta");
builder.Description = "My package created from the API.";
builder.Authors.Add("Sample author");
builder.DependencyGroups.Add(new PackageDependencyGroup(
    targetFramework: NuGetFramework.Parse("netstandard1.4"),
    packages: new[]
    {
        new PackageDependency("Newtonsoft.Json", VersionRange.Parse("10.0.1"))
    }));

using FileStream outputStream = new FileStream("MyPackage.nupkg", FileMode.Create);
builder.Save(outputStream);
Console.WriteLine($"Saved a package to {outputStream.Name}");

Read a package

Read a package from a file.

using FileStream inputStream = new FileStream("MyPackage.nupkg", FileMode.Open);
using PackageArchiveReader reader = new PackageArchiveReader(inputStream);
NuspecReader nuspec = reader.NuspecReader;
Console.WriteLine($"ID: {nuspec.GetId()}");
Console.WriteLine($"Version: {nuspec.GetVersion()}");
Console.WriteLine($"Description: {nuspec.GetDescription()}");
Console.WriteLine($"Authors: {nuspec.GetAuthors()}");

Console.WriteLine("Dependencies:");
foreach (PackageDependencyGroup dependencyGroup in nuspec.GetDependencyGroups())
{
    Console.WriteLine($" - {dependencyGroup.TargetFramework.GetShortFolderName()}");
    foreach (var dependency in dependencyGroup.Packages)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"   > {dependency.Id} {dependency.VersionRange}");
    }
}

Additional documentation

More information about the NuGet.Packaging library can be found on the official Microsoft documentation page and NuGet API docs.