“Best Practices for Designing DTOs (Data Transfer Objects) in C#”?

A lot of people ask what is the better way to generate DTO (data transfer object ), it depends on your source or coming entity that wants to map there are a lot of criteria based on these criteria you decide what the way you will create your DTO, I will show you the 6 ways that can generate you DTO based on the src entity want to map or you want to generate DTO to transfer between your layers.

Record

• store in heap
• must provide value for id
• compare by property value not reference
• immutable can It modified after initialize
• better for immutable. and src entity may be null like FirstOrDefault, and the property required to initialize.

Record Struct

• store in a stack better for GC (garbage collector).
• struct has a default parameterless constructor so you can initialize without passing the value.
• have two styles of initialize property better if you have many properties when trying to initialize.
• compare by property value not reference.
• can’t accept a null value.
• better for memory, and the src entity must have a value like First( ), and property not required to initialize.
• not immutable value can modified after initialization.

Readonly Record Struct

• The same as the record struct but can’t modified after initialization.

Class with init

• store in a heap.
• compare by reference.
• the immutable value can’t be modified after initialization.
• prefer when the property is optional to initialize you can add value to Id or not.

Class with init and required

• The same as a class with init but the property must take value when trying to initialize.

Class with primary constructor

• store in a heap.
• compare by reference.
• the immutable value can’t be modified after initialization.

If any style of DTO you using you can mention it in the comment.