DTO Mappings

ASP.NET Zero uses AutoMapper for DTO to Entity mappings (and other types of object-to-object mappings). We use Abp.AutoMapper library that makes usage of AutoMapper simpler and declarative.

For instance, see the DTO class that is used to transfer a tenant editing information:

[AutoMap(typeof (Tenant))]
public class TenantEditDto : EntityDto
{
    [Required]
    [StringLength(Tenant.MaxTenancyNameLength)]
    public string TenancyName { get; set; }

    [Required]
    [StringLength(Tenant.MaxNameLength)]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public bool IsActive { get; set; }
}

Here, AutoMap attribute automatically creates mapping between TenantEditDto and Tenant classes. Then we can automatically convert a Tenant object to TenantEditDto (and vice verse) object as shown below:

[AbpAuthorize(AppPermissions.Pages_Tenants_Edit)]
public async Task<TenantEditDto> GetTenantForEdit(EntityRequestInput input)
{
    return ObjectMapper.Map<TenantEditDto>(await TenantManager.GetByIdAsync(input.Id));
}

ObjectMapper (this property comes from base class, but can be injected as IObjectMapper when you need somewhere else) is used to perform mappings.

Custom Object Mappings

Attribute based mapping may not be sufficient in some cases. If you need to directly use Automapper API to configure your mappings, you should do it in CustomDtoMapper class.

See Data Transfer Objects documentation for more information on DTOs.