Brief Summary:

This article is intended for .NET Core developers who wish to create a robust and useful.NET core application. It is a list of the most popular and widely used .NET Core libraries that have been carefully vetted. Go up the GitHub reference link for the DotNet libraries and see how many stars the .NET community has rewarded.

Best .NET libraries β€” Top useful libraries every .NET developers use

.NET Core has become one of the most popular frameworks for developing modern applications. One of the reasons for its popularity is the wide range of libraries available to developers. .NET Core got new updates in its features with lesser coding, deploying high-accomplishment, and extremely scalable applications. Making the underlying architecture functions more effective and efficient without having to reinvent the wheel will free up your time to focus on more crucial tasks, including making your application stand out from the competition.

In this article, we'll take a closer look at The Most Popular .NET Libraries Every Developer Should Know. As a software developer, you're likely familiar with the .NET framework and the many libraries it offers. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming to know which ones to choose for your project. This is the main reason I have compiled a list of the Top 10 .NET Libraries That Developers Should Use to make their development process more efficient and effective. A list of Top 10 .NET Core Libraries will let developers understand these so that they can pick appropriate libraries for their projects.

If you're a .NET Core developer, there are 10 important .NET Core libraries that you should be familiar with. While creating these Essential 10 .NET Libraries Every Developer Must Know, I used NuGet and GitHub.com popular repositories. And all the libraries listed here are also open-source. The list is filtered with only to .NET Core related libraries. Also I excluded the Microsoft .NET Core Framework libraries from this Top 10 Unique .NET Core Libraries Developers Must Utilize. So, without further ado, let’s get right into it:

Best .NET libraries with GitHub stars and download counts

Top 10 best libraries for .NET developers

Here's the list of the most popular open-source .NET tools:

  1. Newtonsoft.Json: This library is widely used for working with JSON data in .NET applications. It provides high performance and ease of use, making it a go-to solution for serialization and deserialization of JSON data.
  2. Dapper: It is a simple and efficient ORM that offers high performance and flexibility when working with relational databases. It is easy to use and offers a fast and efficient way to interact with databases.
  3. Polly: Polly is a library that helps handle transient errors and faults in .NET applications. It offers an easy-to-use policy-based approach to handling retries, timeouts, and circuit breakers, making it a valuable tool for building reliable applications.
  4. AutoMapper: This .NET Core library simplifies object-to-object mapping by automatically mapping properties from one object to another. This library is especially useful in larger projects where mapping can become time-consuming and tedious.
  5. FluentValidation: It is a library that provides a fluent API for building validation rules. It makes it easy to create complex validation logic and supports a wide range of validation scenarios, making it a valuable tool for ensuring data integrity in your applications.
  6. Serilog: This library is a structured logging library that makes it easy to collect and analyze logs from your application. It offers flexibility and extensibility, and supports a variety of sinks for storing logs, including Elasticsearch, SQL Server, and more.
  7. Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.Swagger: This library generates OpenAPI documentation for your ASP.NET Core Web API. It makes it easy to understand the functionality of your API and allows you to easily generate client code for your API.
  8. NLog: It is is a free logging platform for .NET with rich log routing and management capabilities. It makes it easy to produce and manage high-quality logs for your application regardless of its size or complexity.
  9. Moq4: It is is a popular mocking framework for .NET applications. It makes it easy to create mock objects for unit testing, reducing the need for expensive and time-consuming integration testing.
  10. StackExchange.Redis: This is a library for working with Redis databases in .NET applications. It provides a simple and efficient way to interact with Redis, and offers high performance and scalability.

10 important .NET Core Libraries

Top 10 .NET Core Libraries List That Every Developer Must Know

Here you can see them in the table with the GitHub stars, GitHub release counts, recent release frequency, NuGet download counts and per day NuGet download counts:

GitHub URL NuGet URL Stars Releases Last release Downloads Download Per Day
Newtonsoft.Json Newtonsoft.Json 10K 65 1 month ago 3B 680K
Dapper Dapper 16K 70 2 years ago 216M 50K
Polly Polly 12K 26 1 year ago 335M 92K
AutoMapper AutoMapper 9K 41 6 months ago 400M 90K
FluentValidation FluentValidation 8K 68 3 days ago 250M 56K
Serilog Serilog 6K 15 1 month ago 722M 197K
Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.Swagger Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.Swagger 5K 28 4 months ago 386M 168K
NLog NLog 6K 125 1 week ago 217M 48K
Moq Moq 5K 33 4 months ago 418M 93K
StackExchange.Redis StackExchange.Redis 5K 34 11 days ago 244M 74K

In conclusion, these 10 .NET Core libraries are essential tools for any .NET Core developer. They offer a wide range of functionality, from handling errors to mocking for unit testing and simplifying object mapping. Whether you're working on a large-scale enterprise application or a small project, these libraries can help you build more reliable, efficient, and effective applications.

There's also a cool GitHub page that gathers all kinds of popular .NET tools. Check out https://github.com/quozd/awesome-dotnet

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