.NEXT 5.x
.NEXT (dotNext) is the family of powerful libraries aimed to improve development productivity and extend the .NET API with unique features. The project is supported by the .NET Foundation.
Note
The documentation for previous major versions is no longer available on this website. However, API docs are still available on FuGet website for any specific library version. Migration guides are here.
This chapter gives a quick overview of these libraries. Read articles for a closer look at all available features.
Prerequisites:
- Runtime: .NET 8
- OS: Linux, Windows, MacOS, WASM, WASI
- Architecture: any if supported by the underlying .NET Runtime
DotNext
This library is the core of .NEXT which extends .NET standard library with
- Generic ranges
- Unified representation of various synchronization primitives in the form of the lock
- Generation of random strings
- Ad-hoc user data associated with arbitrary object
- A rich set of dynamic buffer types
- Fast HEX conversion
- Fast Base64 encoding/decoding for streaming scenarios
- Optional and Result monads
- Soft Reference and async GC notifications
- LEB128 encoding support
DotNext.Metaprogramming
This library provides a rich API to write and execute code on-the-fly. It extends C# Expression Tree programming model with ordinary things for C# such as foreach loop, for loop, while loop, using statement, lock statement, string interpolation and even asynchronous lambda expressions with full support of async/await semantics.
DotNext.Unsafe
This library provides a special types to work with unmanaged memory in safe manner:
- Structured access to unmanaged memory
- Unmanaged memory pool
- Interop with unmanaged memory via Memory value type
- CLS-compliant generic pointer type for .NET languages without direct support of such type. Use this feature to work with pointers from VB.NET or F#.
- Atomic thread-safe operations applicable to data placed into unmanaged memory: increment, decrement, compare-and-set etc, volatile access
DotNext.Threading
The library allows you to reuse experience of blocking synchronization with help of ReaderWriteLockSlim, CountdownEvent and friends in asynchronous code using their alternatives such as asynchronous locks.
The following code describes these alternative implementations of synchronization primitives for asynchronous code:
| Synchronization Primitive | Asynchronous Version |
|---|---|
| ReaderWriteLockSlim | AsyncReaderWriterLock |
| Monitor | AsyncExclusiveLock |
| ManualResetEvent | AsyncManualResetEvent |
| AutoResetEvent | AsyncAutoResetEvent |
| Barrier | AsyncBarrier |
| CountdownEvent | AsyncCountdownEvent |
Some of the asynchronous counterparts have synchronous methods for waiting and lock acquisition that can help to convert step-by-step synchronous code to asynchronous.
But this is not all features of this library. Read more here.
DotNext.IO
Extending streams and I/O pipelines with methods for reading and writing typed values including strings asynchronously. Arbitrary character encodings are supported. Now encoding or decoding data using pipes is much easier and comparable with BinaryWriter or BinaryReader. Read more here.
DotNext.Net.Cluster
Provides rich framework for building clustered microservices based on network consensus and Gossip-based messaging. It includes transport-agnostic implementation of Raft Consensus Algorithm that can be adopted for any communication protocol, TCP/UDP transports for Raft, high-performance persistent Write-Ahead Log suitable for general-purpose usage. Transport-agnostic implementation of HyParView membership protocol included as well.
DotNext.AspNetCore.Cluster
Allows to build clustered microservices which rely on network consensus and distributed messaging with ASP.NET Core framework. This library contains HTTP-based implementation of Raft Consensus Algorithm, HTTP-based distributed messaging across cluster nodes, cluster leader detection, automatic redirection to leader node, HTTP binding for HyParView.
DotNext.MaintenanceServices
Provides Application Maintenance Interface (AMI) for .NET apps and microservices that allows to send maintenance commands to the application directly using Unix Domain Sockets and Unix utilities such as netcat. Thus, the interface is fully interoperable with command-line shells such as Bash. Additionally, AMI enables support of Kubernetes probes for .NET apps in a unified way. Read this article for more information.