Aspire AppHost

Shiny.DocumentDb.Aspire.Hosting models this tool as a resource, so it comes up with the rest of your app and every store you reference is already connected:

var store = builder.AddPostgresDocumentStore("orders");

builder.AddDocumentDbAdmin(port: 8085)
       .WithReference(store)
       .WaitFor(store);

WithReference is the same call a consuming service makes: the tool reads the ConnectionStrings:{name}

• Shiny:DocumentDb:{name}:Provider pair the hosting integration already emits. A connection string with no matching provider key is ignored, so a Redis or blob reference in the same AppHost doesn’t turn into a junk connection.

Referenced stores show up under a from host badge and can’t be edited or deleted from the UI — they’re declared in the AppHost, so that’s where they change. See Connections.

It’s the same image either way — running the AppHost and publishing it — tagged to match the hosting package’s own version, so an integration upgrade brings the matching UI with it.

The full builder

builder.AddDocumentDbAdmin(port: 8085)
       .WithReference(store)
       .WithDataVolume()                                  // keep saved connections across runs
       .WithHostPath("/Users/me/databases", "/databases") // make a file-backed store reachable
       .WithSecretKey(builder.AddParameter("admin-key", secret: true))
       .WithReadOnly()                                    // for anything you didn't create
       .WithoutAi()                                       // for a public demo — see the Assistant
       .WaitFor(store);

Call	What it does
AddDocumentDbAdmin(name, port)	Adds the resource. Leave port null and Aspire picks a free one — fine for poking around, worth pinning when you want a bookmarkable URL.
WithHostPort(port)	Changes that port after the fact.
WithDataVolume(name?)	Keeps the tool’s own state — saved connections, saved queries, uploaded files — in a named volume. Without it, anything saved in the UI is gone at the end of the run.
WithHostPath(host, container)	Bind-mounts a directory so a file-backed store is reachable.
WithSecretKey(parameter)	Sets the key that encrypts saved connection strings. See Configuration.
WithReadOnly()	Blocks every write path for every host-provided connection.
WithoutAi()	Removes the assistant entirely.

Why WithHostPath exists

It’s a container, so it reaches the databases the AppHost models over the container network — which Aspire wires up for you. What it cannot reach is a file on your machine: a SQLite, SQLCipher or DuckDB store living at a host path is invisible inside the container unless you mount it.

So the connection string in the AppHost has to be the path the container will see:

builder.AddDocumentDbAdmin()
       .WithHostPath("/Users/me/databases", "/databases");
// then reference a store whose connection string is Data Source=/databases/orders.db

Health and startup

The resource carries an HTTP health check on /, so WaitFor on it behaves, and the dashboard shows it as unhealthy rather than running while the app is still starting.