Author Adjer_Nimossia recounts the sobering realization that comes with tackling complex backend endpoints in .NET. They seek advice from the community on navigating the leap from basic CRUD to more advanced architectural challenges.

A Humbling Backend Lesson: From CRUD to Complexity

By Adjer_Nimossia

After six months of building personal fullstack projects with Angular and .NET, I started to feel confident. Spinning up a GET endpoint or saving data via POST to SQL Server became routine. With the help of DTOs and mapping functions like MapToEntity(), I felt like I had the basics down.

But confidence sometimes meets its match — for me, it came in the form of a complex endpoint requirement.

Encountering the Raid Boss: The Complex Endpoint

This wasn’t the typical endpoint. To handle an order, it needed to do all of the following in a single API action:

  • Validate foreign keys against three different tables.
  • Check if product stock was sufficient.
  • Deduct the correct quantity from the product inventory.
  • Save the order to the database.

The Mapping Maze: Nested DTOs Everywhere

The complexity extended to the data transfer objects (DTOs):

  • The CreateOrderDto contained a CustomerDto and a list of OrderItemDtos.
  • Each OrderItemDto potentially referenced its own ProductDto.
  • Every DTO needed to be mapped — either automatically (using a tool like AutoMapper) or manually — to corresponding Entity Framework Core entities for persistence.

The task suddenly went well beyond basic CRUD.

A Familiar Developer Feeling

The leap from simple operations to orchestrating complex, chained logic can be daunting:

“I thought I signed up to code, not prepare tax forms!”

Tutorials often illustrate individual CRUD operations. But real-world endpoints may require transaction management, error handling, and defensive programming against side-effects like duplicate actions or emails.

Seeking Community Wisdom

The post seeks advice from more experienced developers:

  • How did you handle the transition to managing more complex backend workflows?
  • Did design patterns or specific strategies help?
  • Does the solution involve dividing tasks into smaller services, or is stress and improvisation a rite of passage?

Conclusion

The journey from basic to advanced backend development in .NET reveals gaps in standard tutorial content and highlights the importance of learning strategies, patterns, and mental models for complex systems.

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