Dapper

What is Dapper

Dapper is simple/ micro ORM for the .NET world. It's a NuGet library that can be added to any .NET project for database operations. ORM stands for Object Relational Mapping, meaning the entire database can be operated in terms of OO classes, Interfaces etc. ORM creates a "virtual database" in terms of classes and provides methods to work with those classes. Dapper is a Micro ORM as it's architected to focus on the most important task of working with database tables instead of creating, modifying the database schema, tracking changes etc.

Hey, I never heard of Dapper, who uses it? Dapper is in production use at Stack Overflow. Really? Yes, Dapper was created by StackOverflow team to address their issues and open source it. Dapper used at Stack Overflow itself showcases its strength.

Why use Dapper

• Dapper is a NuGet library, can be used with any .NET project. Quite lightweight, high performance.

• Drastically reduces the database access code.

• Focus on getting database tasks done instead of being full-on ORM. We cover more on this

• Work with any database - SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL etc.

• For an existing database, using Dapper is an optimal choice.

• Speed and fast in performance.

• Fewer lines of code.

• Object Mapper.

• Static Object Binding.

• Dynamic Object Binding.

• Easy Handling of SQL Query.

• Easy Handling of Stored Procedure.

• Operating directly to IDBConnection class that provides smoothness and running query directly to the database instead of passing data using various objects as we do in EF and ADO.NET.

• Multiple Query Support.

• Support for Stored Procedure.

• Bulk Data insert functionality.

• Dapper also allows fetching multiple data based on multiple inputs

Choosing Dapper over EF Core

EF Core and Dapper are both great technologies, but choosing Dapper would be based on your requirements and here are mine

• Existing database with lots of stored procedure fetching a good amount of records.

• Developer's familiarity in working with raw SQL or ADO.NET.

• The application mainly involves fetching for dashboards, reports.

• Dapper uses underlying SQLConnection to work with the database, so easy it's quite easy to use a different database at the same time i.e. I would use Dapper for SQL Server, Oracle or MySQL in the same application. In real world apps, we usually don't deal with a single database.

How Dapper Works

Dapper is a NuGet library that can be added to any project. It extends the IDbConnection interface. The IDbConnection interface represents an open connection to data source implemented by the .NET framework. Every database provider extends this interface to for their database i.e. SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL etc. Dapper uses this connection, has its own set of methods to work with database independent of which database being chosen. This design goal of Dapper makes it easy to with any database almost in its own way. The following image shows the IDbConnection extended in the SQLConnection class (SQL Server provider).