Blog

The well-structured Entity in EF Core

A database entity represents an identifiable entry, often also things from the real world, which are to be stored and managed in the database. The purpose of database entities is to provide a structured and efficient implementation for organizing and managing information. By identifying entities, defining attributes and establishing relationships, a coherent and meaningful structure is created that allows data to be stored, retrieved and updated effectively. This facilitates data management and analysis in applications and systems.

When to use optional arguments and parameter defaults in c#

In C#, optional arguments are parameters in a method that have default values specified in the method’s declaration. This means that when you call the method, you can omit values for these optional parameters and the method will use the default values defined in its signature. Optional arguments were introduced in C# 4.0 to make it more convenient to work with methods that have a large number of parameters with sensible default values.

.NET 8 makes you faster. Everyday.

As has been the case for many releases, the .NET 8 team is spending a lot of development effort to improve the .NET Runtime in terms of performance. Because fast performance means one thing above all: low energy consumption and high scalability.

Convert UnixTime to DateTimeOffset with a custom System.Text.Json Converter

Some APIs do not follow standards, ignore ISO8601 and return UnixTime. This is not nice, but can be easily fixed with a custom converter for System.Text.Json.

Accelerate your .NET build with Visual Studio 2022

A little more than three months ago, Microsoft integrated a new functionality into Visual Studio 2022: Build Acceleration .

This mechanism, which can be optionally activated, apparently ensures that build times for .NET projects can be reduced by up to 80%. This is, of course, an announcement that I wanted to take a closer look at.

Re-use EF Core Expressions to avoid redundant queries

I often see snippets in EF Core code reviews such as the following:

1dbContext.Users.Where( user => user.Id == id );

The query filter user => user.Id == id is contained directly in the Where - often not just in one place but sometimes in dozens of places. Here I ask myself: why is this not simply outsourced to a central place? It’s so simple!

Easy InMemory Unit Tests with EFCore and Sqlite

Unit testing is a type of software testing that is performed on the smallest unit of a software application, called a “unit”. A unit can be a function, method or module that is tested in isolation from other parts of the code.

Better Code with custom Strong-Id Types

In many software architectures the problem exists that there are methods, which are specified a multiplicity of type-same parameters, whose meaning is however fundamentally different. In principle, this includes all handling of Ids or other essential values that have a logical meaning.

Value Converters in EFCore

In the field of software development, data transformation plays a key role in ensuring that information flows seamlessly between different components and systems. When using Entity Framework (EF Core) , a powerful object-relational mapping (ORM) framework, developers can take advantage of value converters to simplify the process of converting data types between applications and databases. . This blog post explains the concept of value converters in EF Core, their benefits and how to effectively use them in your projects.

Simplify string formatting with SmartFormat.NET

String formatting is a common task in software development and allows you to create dynamic and informative output. Traditional approaches such as string concatenation and compound formatting are widely used, but they quickly become unwieldy and error-prone when formatting requirements become more complex. This is where SmartFormat.NET comes in, a powerful and flexible string formatting library that simplifies the process and offers advanced functionality. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at SmartFormat.NET and how it can improve your string formatting needs.