Data Transfer Objects Best Practices & Conventions

This document offers best practices for implementing Data Transfer Object classes in your modules and applications based on Domain-Driven-Design principles.

Ensure you've read the Data Transfer Objects document first.

General

• Do define DTOs in the application contracts package.
• Do inherit from the pre-built base DTO classes where possible and necessary (like EntityDto<TKey>, CreationAuditedEntityDto<TKey>, AuditedEntityDto<TKey>, FullAuditedEntityDto<TKey> and so on).
  • Do inherit from the extensible DTO classes for the aggregate roots (like ExtensibleAuditedEntityDto<TKey>), because aggregate roots are extensible objects and extra properties are mapped to DTOs in this way.
• Do define DTO members with public getter and setter.
• Do use data annotations for validation on the properties of DTOs those are inputs of the service.
• Do not add any logic into DTOs except implementing IValidatableObject when necessary.
• Do mark all DTOs as [Serializable] since they are already serializable and developers may want to binary serialize them.

See Also

• Video tutorial