InfoCarrier.Core

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InfoCarrier.Core is an Entity Framework Core provider for the client side of a multi-tier application. Your client is a WPF, Blazor WebAssembly, MAUI or console app. It gets a real DbContext with LINQ, change tracking, the identity map, navigation fix-up, lazy loading and transactions, but no connection string and no database driver. Queries and units of work travel to your application server, which executes them with an ordinary EF Core provider.

Installation

# In the client project, and in the server project too.
dotnet add package InfoCarrier.Core

# In the server project only.
dotnet add package InfoCarrier.Core.AspNetCore

Both halves need .NET 10 and EF Core 10.

Basic usage

The DbContext and the entity classes are shared source between the client and the server, so both halves build the same model. On the client, point the context at a transport:

// A WPF, Blazor WebAssembly, MAUI or console app.
using var http = new HttpClient();
IInfoCarrierClient client = InfoCarrierClient.Create(http, options =>
    options.WithEndpoint("https://your-app-server/infocarrier"));

var options = new DbContextOptionsBuilder<ShopContext>().UseInfoCarrier(client).Options;

// Everything below this line is ordinary EF Core.
await using var context = new ShopContext(options);

List<Order> recent = await context.Orders
    .Include(o => o.Customer)
    .Where(o => o.Customer!.Country == "Germany" && o.Freight > 50m)
    .OrderByDescending(o => o.PlacedOn)
    .Take(20)
    .ToListAsync();

recent[0].Freight = 0m;
await context.SaveChangesAsync();

That query is not evaluated on the client. It crosses the wire as an expression tree, and your server runs it against SQL Server, PostgreSQL, SQLite, or whatever provider it uses. On the server, app.MapInfoCarrier() is the endpoint that receives it.

Your first client and server builds the whole pair, and the samples run one command each.

What works

Queries and the client/server projection split, SaveChanges including many-to-many graphs, lazy loading, explicit loading, transactions with savepoints, ExecuteUpdate and ExecuteDelete, complex types, JSON-mapped owned collections, spatial types, compiled models, and Blazor WebAssembly published trimmed.

Where the server's store is relational, the client knows it. The three inheritance mappings, table and entity splitting, EF.Functions and your own HasDbFunction mappings all round trip, and FromSql runs where the server grants it. See the 10.3 release notes.

An HTTP transport ships in the package. To use gRPC, a message bus, or a direct call in the same process, write one small class. IInfoCarrierTransport has one method.

The provider runs Microsoft's own EF Core specification suite, the same suite the SQL Server, SQLite and InMemory providers run. The limitations page lists every scenario in that suite which behaves differently here, with a worked example for each. Read it before you adopt.

Getting support

If you encounter a bug, have a question, or would like to request a feature, open an issue. For a vulnerability, use a draft security advisory instead, as SECURITY.md describes.

Fixes go to the 10.x line. The 1.0 to 3.1 line last shipped on 2021-05-07 and gets none.

Credits

Built on Entity Framework Core and judged by its test suite.

InfoCarrier.Core 1.0 to 3.1, by on/off it-solutions gmbh, proved the idea, and built it on Remote.Linq and aqua-core by Christof Senn. Version 10 has its own serializer and no longer depends on them.

MIT, Copyright (c) Alexander Zabluda. See license.txt.