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It’s not like the war of Pascalcase vs Camelcase hasn’t been going on for a very long time, but in ASP.net core it flared up again with a breaking change in ASP.net core 1.0. You can read the actual change request here on Github, and then the subsequent announcement with some unhappy campers here.

To be clear.

In earlier versions of Web API and indeed early versions of ASP.net core, the default serialization of an object to JSON results in Pascalcase names. When a C# app is talking to another C# app, the casing actually doesn’t matter. You can send JSON data with mYVaRiAbLE and it will still be deserialized into MyVariable in C#.

The issue usually reared it’s head when you were using javascript to consume your Web API. Afterall, when Mozilla, Google, jQuery, WordPress and countless others cite camelCase as the standard for Javascript naming, it’s probably what most people expect to see. If you are binding a model using Angular or similar from a Web API, you probably want to keep with the same naming format. Not have properties that came from your API suddenly be in Pascal Case.

It mostly comes down to the 80/20 rule. I would say a large majority of people using ASP.net core are also using some sort of javascript framework to bind models. And for that, camelCase is best.

So, what are your options if you are still #TeamPascalCase?

Change To PascalCase In ASP.net Core 1.0+

Probably the most annoying thing about this change is that you need to change the ContractResolver for the Json Serializer. The thing that gets people’s goat is that the resolver that makes things PascalCase is actually called the “DefaultContractResolver”…. Even though in version 1.0 and onwards it isn’t the default at all…..

In anycase, in your startup.cs file, find your ConfigureServices method. You should already have an AddMVC call, and tack onto it like so :

Change To camelCase In ASP.net Core <1.0

Just incase you are behind with the times in ASP.net Core versions and you want to move to camelCase by default (Possibly in preparation for upgrading), you can do so by doing similar to the above, but instead making the contract resolver camel case like so :

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So you’ve heard about ASP.net Core and you’re considering the move, but you want to know if it’s really worth it. You will always have to weigh up the pros and cons, especially if you are intending to move an existing app into .net core. But here’s 5 reasons you should definitely consider ASP.net core for your next project.

It’s A Small Learning Curve

Yes it’s true that there is a learning curve when learning .net core, even if you’re a seasoned ASP.net developer, but it’s not as big as you might think. For example, the language is still C#, namespaces are often the same or have been lifted and shifted to an easy location, and many classes/pieces of code you already have are usually able to be moved without too much hassle.

With that being said, there are a few notable exceptions. Things like cryptography services have either been severely changed. In some cases classes like the FTPWebRequest have been completely removed, much to the annoyance of some (Although should be added back in the future). If you are doing a small test application in .net core or have full embraced microservices, you will quickly be able to validate if .net core has everything you need. If you are attempting to port a massive monolith, it might be worthwhile researching into the few things .net core is currently lacking before setting off.

Multi Platform

Usually seen as the number one reason to make the switch. ASP.net Core is able to be run (And developed) on Windows, Mac and Linux. While Visual Studio is still Windows only, VS Code and Jetbrains Rider are available on all OS to develop .net core solutions. Your devops team will no doubt love you with the ability to now deploy the code on cheaper (And to some people, more reliable) Linux machines too!

It’s not like you are left on your own to work it out either. Microsoft has published documentation on getting ASP.net core running on Ubuntu, documentation on getting ASP.net core running on Apache with CentOS, and even how to get everything up and running on Docker. Imagine that happening just 5 years ago!

One Web Framework To Learn

In previous versions of ASP.net you had a difference between MVC controllers and API controllers. It seemed simple enough, but you then ended up with different ways to configure your web app. You could be half way through a ModelBinding tutorial before you realized it was for MVC only and you had to do something slightly different to get it working in the API. It was super frustrating! But in .net Core, It is all one and the same. One action can return JSON data, one can return an ActionResult, all in the same controller!

It’s Light

Previously you had to have the .net framework installed on your target machine when deploying. Not anymore! When deploying .net applications you can package up everything your app needs into a single zip and deploy only that. That means that your only shifting exactly what you need, as well as reducing the complexity of a machine setup if you are doing horizontal scaling.

It’s Fast

While the results are somewhat disputed on how “useful” and “real world” they are. The current benchmarks of ASP.net core’s web server (Kestrel), can currently serve over 1.2 million requests per second. For comparison in that benchmark, standard IIS can server around around 60k per second. These are plaintext benchmarks so it’s not running actual .net core code, but it’s still interesting to see the huge improvement in web server performance.