Stop Building SPAs for Every Screen: htmx + ASP.NET Core Razor Pages Workshop (Open)
If your default move for “modern UX” is a SPA, you are paying a tax you do not need. You pay for it in build pipelines, duplicated validation rules, fragile client state, and a front end that turns routine CRUD into an engineering project. This workshop is a different bet. We keep the server in charge, keep HTML as the …
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Enterprise Patterns for ASP.NET Core: Front Controller and MVC Pattern
If every controller in your system does its own authentication, logging, and error handling, you do not have an architecture. You have a crowd of small frameworks pretending to cooperate. Front Controller and MVC are the patterns that push back against that drift. In ASP.NET Core, the pipeline and routing already give you a natural front controller. The real question …
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Enterprise Patterns for ASP.NET Core Minimal API: Lazy Load Pattern
If a single endpoint pulls half your database just to render a small card on a mobile screen, your problem is not the database. Your problem is that you are afraid to say no. Lazy Load is how you say no. You refuse to pay for the cost of related data until it’s actually needed. Used with intent, it protects …
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Enterprise Patterns for ASP.NET Core Minimal API: Identity Map Pattern
If one customer quietly turns into three different in-memory objects during a single request, your domain is already lying to you. You see it when: The Identity Map pattern exists to stop this drift. It gives you a single rule: Within a Unit of Work, there should be exactly one in-memory object per database identity. In other words, one row, …
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Enterprise Patterns for ASP.NET Core Minimal API: Unit of Work Pattern
If a single business operation calls SaveChangesAsync three times, you do not have a transaction. You have a sequence of partial commits that you hope never fails in the middle. Think about a typical “Place Order” flow: In many codebases, each step touches persistence on its own schedule. A service somewhere calls SaveChangesAsync. Another service does the same. A helper …
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Enterprise Patterns for ASP.NET Core Minimal API: Repository Pattern
If DbContext shows up in every corner of your codebase, you do not have a domain model. You have a thin layer of LINQ wrapped in HTTP. You see it when: A tiny change in schema or query behavior then turns into a scavenger hunt across controllers, services, and helpers. The Repository pattern exists to stop that. A repository gives …
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Enterprise Patterns for ASP.NET Core Minimal API: Data Mapper Pattern
If every interesting class in your system secretly knows a connection string, your domain is not a model. It is a thin layer of code on top of a data access layer. You see it when: At that point, changing a column name feels risky. Changing an important rule feels worse because it’s tangled with SQL and infrastructure. The Data …
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Enterprise Patterns for ASP.NET Core Minimal API: Active Record Pattern
Sometimes, your domain is really just rows in a table. You have a Customers table with Id, Email, and CreditLimit.You load a row, tweak a field, and write it back.That is the whole story. In that situation, introducing a complete Domain Model, Data Mapper, and Repository stack can feel like ceremony for ceremony’s sake. The Active Record pattern exists for precisely this scenario: when your object and …
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Debugging Entity Framework Core: 8 Real-World Query Anti‑Patterns (and How to Fix Them)
This is my post for the 2025 C# Advent. Check out all the great posts! I want to wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and, finally, Happy Festivus. I will not be sharing my “Airing of grievances” or challenge anyone to a “Feats of strength.” Entity Framework Core is an excellent library for CRUD operations against …
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Enterprise Patterns for ASP.NET Core Minimal API: Service Layer Pattern – Making HTTP a Client, Not the Boss
Open a typical ASP.NET Core project, and you will often see the same shape: If you have ever tried to add a second client (a background worker, a message handler, or a gRPC API), you probably copied a large chunk of controller logic and hoped no one noticed. The Service Layer pattern exists to stop that. Instead of letting controllers …
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