Every business tries its best to stay ahead of others and satisfy customers' demands. It is at the crux of incorporating technology to achieve the client's and developers' requirements. The .NET framework is the most updated and valuable open-source development platform that gives robust, dynamic, and feature-rich mobile applications and websites. Well, here is a list of open-source .NET libraries that help reduce developers' work and let them design and manage their applications effortlessly.
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A Short Introduction To .NET Core
The most important thing a developer needs is a platform and a framework that can help them to deliver the project effectively. Here comes the need for .NET, an easy-to-use framework that has tools for most of the functionality of the web application. Some of the prominent advantages of .NET are that it is an open source and mature framework that is used globally. In addition, .NET supports a wider range of Application types and provides enhanced security, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. .NET has a large developers community, built and managed by Microsoft that assists developers to solve and discuss tricky problems.
Microsoft launched its first .NET framework on 13 February 2002, almost two decades ago, but the .Net core was launched on 27 June 2016. The latest version of the .NET core is 3.1 released on 12 July 2022, and the last date for support will be 13 December 2022. The .NET framework has experienced massive growth in the past few years, showing how developers find it easy to use.
- Swashbuckle
It is a library known for generating API documentation and comprises Swagger UI that helps in testing and exploring API operations. Swashbuckle can be easily configured in a project, and within a few minutes, it gets started. The core features of Swashbuckle are Swagger UI extensibility hooks, supports APIKey, authentication Implicit OAuth2 flow and scheme, basic authentication, and XML comments.
- AutoMapper
This .NET core library is responsible for managing object-to-object mapping. Developers enjoy a kind of relief after using this library, as they do not need to worry about the code while mapping values. AutoMapper has exclusive features like Microsoft DI Extensions, EF6 Extensions, Record/ IDataReader Extensions, Enum Extensions, and Expression Mapping.
- Polly
This lightweight Dotnet library lets .NET core developers handle faults such as timeout, retrying, bulkhead isolation, circuit break, thread-safe fallback, and bulkhead isolation. The features of Polly are enabling zero-dependency, navigating via an unreliable network, and offering resilient strategies.
- AspNetCore.Diagnostics.HealthChecks
AspNetCore.Diagnostics.HealthChecks is a UI port and BeatPulse liveness checker. It includes the Microsoft Health Checks version of ASP.NET Core 2.2. With the help of this library, developers can monitor health checks for databases, apps, Azure services, and APIs. To display health checks, this .NET library can design beautiful UIs.
- SaasKit
This net core library is responsible for creating software-as-a-platform applications. With this library, developers can create multi-tenant applications with the OWIN interface. Ben Foster is the founder of this library and writes several informative articles on the usage of the SaaSKit library, which users can go through before using SaaSKit.
- CacheManager
This open-source abstraction layer is written in C# for Dot Net and supports several cache providers. CacheManager incorporates several advanced features, and its primary objective is to make things easier for developers. CacheManager helps handle complicated caching scenarios, and it holds a license from Apache-2.0.
- MailKit
It is another cross-platform dot NET core library mainly used by client servers. The exclusive features of MailKit are Proxy support for SOCKS, SOCKS4/4a, and HTTP, Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL), Pop3, IMAP4, and SMTP client, and API cancellation.
- Dapper
For .NET, Dapper is an easy-to-use and simple object mapper. Its high-performance micro-ORM supports MySQL, SQL Server, SQL CE, Sqlite, and Firebird. Anyone can use Sapper by installing the NuGet package that extends the functionality of the IDbConnection interface.
- NLog
It is an open-source logging tool used in different applications of Xamarin and .NET. NLog is a cross-platform available for free and easy to expand and set up. This simple logging application has excellent management and log routing features. That’s why all these things make NLog a good choice when picking a high-performance logging system.
- Ocelot
This open-source API gateway is used for running service-oriented architecture and microservices. Ocelot is used for request aggregation, routing rate limiting, web sockets, authorization, authentication, load balancing, caching, configuration, and balancing.
Other Useful .NET Core Libraries Used By Developers.
Developers use not only the above-listed .NET Core libraries but also many others depending on the requirements of the application. Apart from the above, a few other libraries that developers find robust and flexible to use are mentioned below.
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- LiteDB
It is a lightweight MongoDB similar to a NoSQL database for the .NET core. This open-source library lets everyone use it absolutely for free. Some amazing features of LiteDB are query support for loader and index, per collection lock for the writer, and no lock for the reader. It also has system collection file storage facilities and is also used for the transaction of thread-safe cross-collection.
- Bcrypt.NET
The Bcrypt.NET is designed by Damien Miller and used for encrypting the .NET framework. This library is being used with bot .NET core and .NET frameworks and holds a BSD-3 clause license.
- Smidge
This .NET core library ensures the development of the framework of an app and is extensible and lightweight. The primary features of Smidge are server-side and client-side caching, compression, combination, and minification for CSS/JSS files, cache-busting, fluent syntax, and production and debugging configuration for every bundle.
- unit conversion
For both .NET and .NET core frameworks, it is a suitable library that is responsible for unit conversions. The units included are Distance, Time, Mass, Volume, and Area Conversions.
- FluentEmail
FluentEmail is a library that helps send emails in .NET Core and .NET frameworks flawlessly. It uses SMTP, MailGun, SendGrid, and several other protocols for email regarding tasks.
Signing Off
Hopefully, this blog will give developers an idea of the top .NET core libraries they can use from time to time. Every library has its speciality, so users must understand the requirements and then use them to create an efficient application. In that way, they can make the maximum benefit of the libraries in their projects. Understanding and analyzing the business requirement will assist you to use a specific library for a specific task in case you’re looking to hire Dot Net developers.
