Building robust, high-performing web applications is critical for businesses in today’s digital landscape. Hire .NET developers as an ASP.NET developer or owner seeking to develop a secure, fast, and interactive web app; following best practices is key. This article outlines the top 10 best practices for ASP.NET application development to help you optimize performance, security, and user experience.
By partnering with a skilled .NET development services provider, you can ensure your ASP.NET application is built right the first time. Their expertise in following proven ASP.NET best practices will allow you to get to market faster with a high-quality product. An experienced .NET development team will also stay on top of the latest ASP.NET features and techniques.
Top 10 Best Practices for .NET Application Development
1. Embracing the Latest Version of ASP.NET Core
ASP.NET Core is Microsoft’s cross-platform framework for building modern, cloud-based, internet-connected applications. With each new version, ASP.NET Core introduces new features and enhanced performance, making it a smart choice for developers.
Best Practice: Always opt for the latest version of ASP.NET for developing your web applications. The updated version ensures that your applications benefit from the latest technology advancements, providing you with a competitive edge.
2. Steering Clear of Blocking Calls
Blocking calls in ASP.NET Core web applications can lead to degraded performance. When a thread is blocked, it is unable to perform any other task until the blocking operation completes. This can result in Thread Pool starvation and slow response times.
Best Practice: It is advised to avoid blocking asynchronous execution by calling Task.Wait or Task.Result. Instead, make all hot code paths asynchronous and use async APIs where available.
3. Minimizing Large Objects Allocation in Hot Code Paths
The ASP.NET Core garbage collector plays a crucial role in memory management by automatically allocating and releasing memory. However, large objects (> 85 K bytes) can hamper the performance of your ASP.NET web applications.
Best Practice: Web developers should aim to reduce the allocation of large objects in hot code paths. This can be achieved by caching large objects that are frequently used and making use of ArrayPool to store large arrays.
4. Optimizing Data Access
Data access activities can greatly impact the performance of your web application. Reading and writing data to a database is a time-consuming process that can stall the loading times of your application.
Best Practice: To improve performance, data access logic should be optimized. This can include writing queries to access only the required data for the current HTTP call, reducing network round trips, and making all data access APIs asynchronous.
5. Fine-tuning Frequently called Code Paths
To ensure your application runs seamlessly and quickly, frequently called code paths such as custom logging, authorization handlers, or transient services initialization need to be optimized.
Best Practice: Avoid using custom middleware components for long-running tasks. Instead, use performance profiling tools like Visual Studio Diagnostic Tools & PerfView to locate frequently called code paths.
6. Completing Long-running Tasks Outside of HTTP Requests
For HTTP requests that consist of long-running tasks, it’s good practice to create the complete request-response process asynchronously. This can greatly enhance the performance of your ASP.NET Core application.
Best Practice: Do not wait for long-running tasks to complete while processing an ordinary HTTP request. Handle long-running requests with background services and use real-time communication options to interact with clients asynchronously.
7. Pooling HTTP Connections with HttpClientFactory
HttpClientFactory, introduced in ASP.NET, manages the pooling of HTTP connections to enhance performance and reliability.
Best Practice: Avoid creating and discarding HttpClient instances directly. Instead, use HttpClientFactory to fetch HttpClient instances.
8. Minification & Bundling of Client Assets
To optimize the performance of your ASP.NET Core web applications, it’s crucial to minify and bundle client assets. This can help in reducing load times and bandwidth usage.
Best Practice: Compress images using compression tools, minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript resources, and bundle all compressed files into one. Also, use third-party tools for managing complex client assets.
9. Reducing the Application’s Response Size
The response size can significantly impact a web application’s responsiveness.
Best Practice: Compress the response size to enhance your application’s responsiveness. Use Microsoft.AspNetCore.ResponseCompression package is available in ASP.NET Core for response compression.
10. Minimizing Exceptions
Throwing and catching exceptions is slower than other code flow patterns. Therefore, avoiding exceptions to control the normal program flow is best.
Best Practice: Add logic in the application to identify and handle conditions that would throw an exception. Use App diagnostic tools to pinpoint common exceptions that may hamper performance.
Wrapping Up
We hope these best practices will assist you in your several asp .NET development projects. The key is always striving to provide your customers with the best possible user experience to achieve desired business outcomes. Mastering ASP.NET application development requires continuous learning and adapting to the latest industry standards.
For rapidly building secure, high-quality ASP.NET solutions, partnering with an experienced .NET development company is highly recommended. They will follow proven techniques and stay updated on the newest ASP.NET features. An expert .NET developer can guide you in making the right technology choices for your unique requirements. Investing in professional .NET development services will accelerate your time-to-market and provide long-term maintenance support.
