Open-source libraries reduce the amount of effort required of developers and make it simple for them to construct and maintain their applications.
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As per the .NET Foundation Survey, there were a wide variety of apps that were being built with API ranking at 1st.
If you’re looking to hire .NET developers to build applications for your company, you need to assess their skills first.
How?
The easiest way is to see their grasp on the crucial .NET core libraries. Before you hire .NET developers test their knowledge and proficiency in these .NET core libraries.
We have listed the 10 .NET core libraries that will help you distinguish a good .net developer from an average or bad one.
1. Swashbuckle: A .NET core library that can help build API documentation
With Swashbuckle, .net developers can generate Swagger documents for Web APIs that are built with ASP.NET Core.
The .NET core library includes a cross-platform library of styles, documentation, and code snippets.
It creates a unique style that is easy to comprehend to build API documentation.
Three core components of Swashbuckle:
- SwaggerGen – It provides the functionality to generate JSON Swagger documents that describe the objects, methods, return types, etc.
- SwaggerUI – an embedded version of the Swagger UI tool.
- Swagger – a Swagger object model and middleware used to expose SwaggerDocument objects as JSON endpoints.
With these components, Swashbuckle can help with automatic Swagger 2.0 generation, easy integration with Swagger UI
Generation of schemas via reflection, basic authentication, APIKey, and implicit OAuth2 scheme and flow.
2. Polly allows developer to express policies
The .NET core library is a resilient and transient-fault-handling library.
With Polly, developers can express policies such as Retry, Circuit Breaker, Timeout, Bulkhead Isolation, Rate-limiting and Fallback in a fluent and thread-safe manner.
Here are a few instances of how it works.
- Retry – If there are many transient faults that self-correct after a short delay, Retry will configure automatic retries.
- Circuit breaker – If your system is struggling and making your users/callers wait, circuit breaker breaks the circuit (blocks executions) for a period, when faults exceed some pre-configured threshold.
- Timeout – If you are waiting for a feature to work but the success seems unlikely, Timeout guarantees that the caller won’t have to wait beyond the timeout.
- Fallback – Fallback helps you plan for when things inevitably fail. It defines an alternative value to be returned (or action to be executed) on failure.
3. MailKit: is a fully-featured email .NET core library
MailKit is a cross-platform mail client library built on top of MimeKit. The .NET library is for IMAP, POP3, and SMTP.
Features:
- SASL Authentication for CRAM-MD5, DIGEST-MD5, LOGIN, NTLM, PLAIN, SCRAM-SHA-1[-PLUS], SCRAM-SHA-256[-PLUS], SCRAM-SHA-512[-PLUS], OAUTHBEARER and XOAUTH2 (partial support – you need to fetch the auth tokens yourself)
- Proxy Support – SOCKS4/4a, SOCKS5 and HTTP/S
- SMTP Client Supports all of the SASL mechanisms listed above, supports SSL-wrapped connections via the “smtps” protocol, supports client SSL/TLS certificates, supports the following extensions: SIZE, DSN, AUTH, 8BITMIME, PIPELINING, BINARYMIME, CHUNKING, STARTTLS, SMTPUTF8.
4. CacheManager to build caching
CacheManager is an open source caching abstraction layer for .NET written in C#. It supports various cache providers and implements many advanced features.
The CacheManager package’s main objective is to make life easier for developers by handling even the most complex caching circumstances.
In just a few lines of code, a developer can build many layers of caching, such as in-process caching in front of a distributed cache with CacheManager.
It is also very simple for the developer to change the caching strategy later on in a project because CacheManager provides more than just an interface to standardize the programming model for various cache providers.
It provides capabilities like concurrent updates, serialization, events, performance metrics, and cache synchronization. The developer can use these features if and when needed.
5. Dapper: an object mapper
Dapper is a straightforward .NET object mapper.
Supported databases include SQL Server, MySQL, Sqlite, SqlCE, Firebird, and more with this high-performance micro-ORM.
A developer can use it by installing the NuGet package, which increases the capability of the IDbConnection interface.
Package Purposes:
- EntityFramework – Extension handlers for EntityFramework
- EntityFramework.StrongName – Extension handlers for EntityFramework
- Rainbow – Micro-ORM implemented on Dapper, provides CRUD helpers
- SqlBuilder – Component for building SQL queries dynamically and composably
- StrongName – High-performance micro-ORM supporting MySQL, Sqlite, SqlICE, and Firebird
6. SaasKit to build multi-tenant applications
With SaasKit, a developer can easily build multi-tenant applications. Multi-tenancy refers to running a single instance of software for multiple tenants/customers.
SaasKit uses the concept of adding middleware using the OWIN interface. With the library, developers can build SaaS products.
7. Ocelot: a middleware everyone needs
Ocelot is a .NET core library for API Gateway.
Developers who use .NET and have a service-oriented architecture or microservices that need a single point of entry into their system should have the Ocelot library.
However, the library will also function on every platform that ASP.NET Core supports and be compatible with anything that speaks HTTP.
To put it simply, Ocelot is a bunch of middlewares in a specific order.
When Ocelot reaches a request builder middleware, it manipulates the HttpRequest object into the state indicated by its settings and then builds a HttpRequestMessage object that is used to send a request to a downstream service.
The final step in the Ocelot pipeline is the middleware that submits the request. It doesn’t make a middleware call after that. While the requests are being sent back up the Ocelot pipeline, the response from the downstream service is being retrieved. A piece of middleware that is returned to the client transfers the HttpResponseMessage onto the HttpResponse object.
Features:
- Routing
- Request Aggregation
- Service Discovery with Consul & Eureka
- Service Fabric
- Kubernetes
- WebSockets
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Rate Limiting
- Caching
- Retry policies / QoS
- Load Balancing
- Logging / Tracing / Correlation
- Headers / Method / Query String / Claims Transformation
- Custom Middleware / Delegating Handlers
- Configuration / Administration REST API
- Platform / Cloud Agnostic
8. NLog to manage logs
NLog is a free logging platform for .NET. It has extensive log management and routing features. It makes it simple to produce and manage high-quality logs, regardless of the size or complexity of your application.
Any. NET language’s diagnostic signals can be processed, enhanced with contextual data, formatted to your preferences, and can be sent to one or more targets like files or databases.
Packages:
- NLog
- Extensions.Logging
- Config
- Contrib.ActiveMQ
- Database
- Elmah
- Etw
- DiagnosticSource
- InstallNLogConfig
- MailKit
- ManualFlush
9. FluentEmail to simplify emails
FluentEmail is the easiest way to send email from .NET and .NET Core. The all in one email sender for .NET uses Razor for email templates and sends using SendGrid, MailGun, SMTP and more.
Core FluentEmail libraries:
- Core – Just the domain model. Includes very basic defaults, but is also included with every other package here.
- Smtp – Send email via SMTP server.
10. SignalR can take your app to the next level
SignalR makes it incredibly simple for developers to add real-time web functionality to their applications.
It has built-in support for auto-reconnect on network loss, bi-directional communication, and long-polling.
Now that we have briefed you on the important .NET core libraries, you can begin your search to hire .NET developers.
