Kovecses.Requests

High-performance, "no-magic" light request handling implementation for .NET 8, 9, and 10.

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Support the Project

If you find this library useful, please give it a star on GitHub! It helps more developers discover the project. ⭐

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The Three Core Principles

Kovecses.Requests was built with a clear focus on three main goals:

1. High Performance: Optimized execution path with pre-compiled factories and native .NET DI resolution during injection.
2. No Magic / Transparent Debugging: Direct handler injection. No "invisible" dispatchers or runtime reflection during execution. If you want to see the implementation, just press F12 on the handler in your endpoint.
3. Clean Architecture with Pipeline Support: Benefit from decoupled cross-cutting concerns (like logging and validation) via a stateless pipeline implementation that fully supports advanced scenarios like Retry policies (Polly) and recovery logic.

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Installation

Install the package via NuGet:

dotnet add package Kovecses.Requests

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Basic Usage

1. Define Request and Response

using Kovecses.Requests;

public record GetBooksQuery : IRequest<IEnumerable<BookDto>>;

2. Implement Handler

internal sealed class GetBooksHandler(IBookRepository repository) 
    : IRequestHandler<GetBooksQuery, IEnumerable<BookDto>>
{
    public Task<IEnumerable<BookDto>> HandleAsync(GetBooksQuery request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
        => repository.GetAllAsync(cancellationToken);
}

3. Register Services in Startup

// In Program.cs or Startup configuration
builder.Services.AddRequests<Program>();  // Scans assemblies and registers handlers

4. Inject and Use in Minimal API

// Direct injection of the handler - clean, fast, and F12-able!
app.MapGet("books", async (
    IRequestHandler<GetBooksQuery, IEnumerable<BookDto>> handler,
    CancellationToken cancellationToken) =>
{
    var result = await handler.HandleAsync(new GetBooksQuery(), cancellationToken);
    
    return Results.Ok(result);
});

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Usage in Background Services

When injecting handlers into Singleton services (like BackgroundService), always use IServiceScopeFactory to resolve the handler within a new scope. This prevents captive dependencies and ensures the Transient pipeline behaves correctly.

using var scope = scopeFactory.CreateScope();
var handler = scope.ServiceProvider.GetRequiredService<IRequestHandler<MyRequest, MyResponse>>();

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Advanced Registration & Behaviors

The IRequestsBuilder provides a fluent API to register your handlers and cross-cutting concerns (behaviors).

OpenTelemetry & Distributed Tracing

Monitoring and observability are essential for modern cloud-native applications. Kovecses.Requests provides built-in support for OpenTelemetry via an optional behavior.

1. Enable the behavior:

builder.Services.AddRequests<Program>()
    .AddOpenTelemetry(); // Enables ActivitySource-based tracing for all requests

2. Configure OpenTelemetry to collect the traces: To actually see the traces, you must register the Kovecses.Requests source in your OpenTelemetry configuration:

services.AddOpenTelemetry()
    .WithTracing(tracing => tracing
        .AddSource("Kovecses.Requests") // <-- Required to collect library traces
        .AddAspNetCoreInstrumentation()
        .AddConsoleExporter());

This registers a global OpenTelemetryBehavior that automatically starts an Activity for each request. It captures the request type and handles exception reporting.

Registration Options

builder.Services.AddRequests<Program>()
    // 1. Global Behavior: Applies to EVERY request
    .AddGlobalBehavior(typeof(LoggingBehavior<,>))
    
    // 2. Interface-based Behavior: Applies only to requests implementing IValidatable marker interface
    // Example: public record UpdateBookCommand : IRequest<BookDto>, IValidatable;
    .AddBehavior<IValidatable>(typeof(ValidationBehavior<,>))
    
    // 3. Explicit Behavior: Applies ONLY to this specific request
    .AddBehavior<GetBooksQuery, IEnumerable<BookDto>, ActiveOnlyBehavior>();

Note: All behaviors are registered with Transient lifetime to ensure thread safety and avoid accidental state sharing in the pipeline. This also optimizes performance as the DI container can resolve them efficiently.

Example Behavior Implementation

public class LoggingBehavior<TRequest, TResponse>(ILogger<LoggingBehavior<TRequest, TResponse>> logger)
    : IPipelineBehavior<TRequest, TResponse>
    where TRequest : IRequest<TResponse>
{
    public async Task<TResponse> HandleAsync(
        TRequest request,
        RequestHandlerDelegate<TResponse> next,
        CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        logger.LogInformation("Starting request {RequestName}", typeof(TRequest).Name);
        
        // The cancellation token is automatically propagated through the pipeline closure
        var response = await next();
        
        logger.LogInformation("Finished request {RequestName}", typeof(TRequest).Name);

        return response;
    }
}

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Benchmarks

The following benchmarks compare Kovecses.Requests with MediatR using BenchmarkDotNet.

Environment: .NET 10.0.1, macOS 26.6 (Darwin 25.6.0), Apple M1

Disclaimer: This comparison is not "apples-to-apples" in terms of features. MediatR is a feature-rich library with a central dispatcher and dynamic resolution. Kovecses.Requests intentionally opts for direct injection and native DI resolution. These benchmarks illustrate the "infrastructure tax" (runtime overhead) you can avoid by choosing a no-magic, direct-injection approach.

Simple Request/Response

Measures resolving a handler from DI and executing it.

Method	Mean	Ratio	Allocated
DirectCall	7.831 ns	1.00	72 B
KovecsesRequests	56.332 ns	7.19	168 B
MediatR	81.454 ns	10.40	200 B

Pipeline (2 Behaviors)

Measures resolving a handler with a pipeline (2 behaviors) and executing it.

Method	Mean	Ratio	Allocated
DirectCall	8.155 ns	1.00	72 B
KovecsesRequests_With2Behaviors	139.091 ns	17.06	672 B
MediatR_With2Behaviors	177.913 ns	21.82	728 B

Note: In these benchmarks, KovecsesRequests includes manual DI resolution (GetRequiredService) to accurately reflect the overhead in a real-world Minimal API endpoint.

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.