10 Best Practices to Supercharge Your ASP.Net Core Application Performance

Introduction:

In today’s competitive digital landscape, delivering high-performance web applications is crucial for businesses to stay ahead. ASP.Net Core, backed by Microsoft, offers a powerful framework for building robust and secure web applications. However, to truly harness the potential of ASP.Net Core, developers must adopt smart development practices and continually optimize their applications for superior performance. In this blog, we will explore ten best practices that can help you elevate the performance of your ASP.Net Core applications and provide an exceptional user experience.

• Why ASP.Net Core is the best?

Before diving into the best practices, let’s quickly recap why ASP.Net Core stands out as one of the best technologies available today. ASP.Net Core brings together the benefits of ASP.Net and MVC.Net, offering a common programming paradigm. Its advantages include:

Asynchronous Programming Model: ASP.Net Core leverages asynchronous programming, allowing you to save time and resources by eliminating CPU waits for web service calls, database queries, and I/O operations. This results in significantly faster processes.

Scalability and Security: ASP.Net Core is renowned for its robust security features, making it an excellent choice for enterprise applications. It provides built-in and third-party libraries and tools for HTTPS enforcement, data protection, anti-request forgery protection, CORS management, and authentication/authorization management. Additionally, ASP.Net Core’s distributed cache ensures high scalability, catering to businesses of all sizes.

Hybrid App Development Support: ASP.Net Core’s modular architecture enables the development of hybrid apps suitable for both Windows and the web. This versatility makes it a powerful framework for building secure and scalable applications.

Easy Deployment, Integration, and Maintenance: ASP.Net Core’s portable and lightweight nature allows seamless integration with multiple libraries, tools, and programming languages. Developers can easily integrate third-party libraries, deploy applications, and maintain them efficiently.

Open-Source: Being an open-source framework, ASP.Net Core is freely available to developers worldwide. This not only reduces development costs but also enables developers to benefit from a vibrant community of ASP.Net Core enthusiasts for support and guidance.

Cross-Platform Flexibility: ASP.Net Core’s cross-platform capabilities allow you to develop web applications that run flawlessly on Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems. This flexibility expands the reach of your applications to a broader audience.

• Best Development Practices to Adhere for Efficient ASP.Net Core Applications:

• Use the Latest Version:

Always stay up-to-date with the latest version of ASP.Net Core. Each new release brings advanced features, performance enhancements, and bug fixes. Microsoft continually invests in improving the performance of ASP.Net Core, making it crucial to leverage the latest version’s benefits.

• Avoid Blocking Calls:

Design your ASP.Net Core application to execute processes asynchronously. Utilize asynchronous APIs that can handle multiple requests concurrently without waiting for blocking calls. Avoid synchronous tasks and blocking methods like Task.Wait or Task.Result. Instead, make use of asynchronous patterns for data access, I/O operations, and long-running tasks to ensure smooth and uninterrupted application performance.

• Use Cache:

Caching plays a vital role in reducing server requests and improving overall performance. Implement client-side, server-side, or client/server-side caching techniques in your ASP.Net Core application. Caching minimizes the need for repetitive requests to the server by storing responses and retrieving them when needed. ASP.Net Core provides various caching options, such as in-memory caching, response caching, and distributed caching, to optimize performance effectively.

• Optimize Data Access:

To enhance performance, optimize your data access logic. Minimize the number of network round trips by reducing unnecessary HTTP calls and fetching data in a more efficient manner. Consider fetching required data in a single or fewer calls, and utilize techniques like lazy loading and eager loading to optimize database queries. Additionally, leverage caching for unchanged data to avoid repeated database trips and improve response times.

• Optimize Custom Code:

Optimizing custom code is crucial for maximizing ASP.Net Core performance. Pay attention to areas such as logging, authentication, and handler code, ensuring they are efficient and lightweight. Consider performing long-running tasks asynchronously to prevent blocking and improve overall application responsiveness. Utilize real-time client-server communication techniques like SignalR for efficient and interactive user experiences.

Use Response Caching Middleware:

Leverage the power of Middleware components in ASP.Net Core for response caching. By utilizing Response Caching Middleware, you can cache entire responses or specific parts of responses, reducing the need for generating the same response repeatedly. This significantly enhances performance by serving cached responses directly, minimizing server workload and response times. You can easily incorporate response caching using the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Response Caching package.

• Minimize Large Object Allocations:

Large object allocations can have a detrimental impact on performance and garbage collection. Minimize memory overhead by optimizing the usage of large objects. Consider implementing strategies such as caching frequently used objects and utilizing ArrayPool<T> for efficient memory management. By reducing large object allocations, you can improve overall application performance and minimize memory pressure.

• Use JSON Serialization:

In ASP.Net Core 6.0, consider leveraging the built-in ‘System.Text.Json’ for JSON serialization. This high-performance JSON serializer provides significant performance advantages over Newtonsoft.Json, making it a preferred choice for efficient data serialization. Ensure you properly configure and optimize the serialization process to minimize overhead and enhance application speed.

• Use Response Compression:

Compressing the file size of responses can significantly improve performance by reducing bandwidth usage and decreasing response times. ASP.Net Core provides response compression middleware that enables automatic compression of HTTP responses. By enabling response compression, you can deliver smaller payloads to clients, leading to faster loading times and improved user experience.

• Minimize Exceptions:

Excessive throwing and catching of exceptions can degrade application performance. Handle exceptions appropriately and efficiently, focusing on catching only necessary exceptions rather than catching them all. Implement proper exception-handling strategies to gracefully recover from exceptions and avoid unnecessary performance overhead caused by excessive exception-handling.

• Bonus Tips to Improve Performance (Optional):

In addition to the core best practices, consider implementing these bonus tips to further enhance the performance of your ASP.Net Core applications:

Prefer ReadFormAsync over Request.Form for efficient form data retrieval.

Avoid storing HttpContext in a field to minimize memory usage and improve scalability.

Utilize bundling and minification techniques to reduce the number of requests and optimize client-side performance.

Load JavaScript files at the end of the HTML document to prevent blocking rendering and improve page load speed.

Optimize images by compressing them and leveraging modern image formats like WebP. Additionally, consider lazy loading images to improve initial page load times.

Utilize Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) for efficient content delivery, reducing server load and enhancing global availability and performance.

Conclusion:

By implementing these ten best practices and incorporating the suggested bonus tips, you can significantly improve the performance of your ASP.Net Core applications. Delivering fast and responsive web experiences not only enhances user satisfaction but also drives business success. Stay committed to optimizing your application’s performance and leverage the power of ASP.Net Developer in india to its fullest potential.

Remember, our experienced team of ASP.Net Core developers is here to assist you in implementing these best practices and overcoming any challenges you may face. Reach out to us today for a consultation and take your ASP.Net Core applications to new heights of performance and excellence.