What is Foundatio.Repositories?

Foundatio.Repositories is a production-grade repository pattern library for .NET that provides a clean abstraction over data access with powerful features like caching, messaging, soft deletes, and versioning. It's built on top of Foundatio building blocks and currently provides a full-featured Elasticsearch implementation.

Why Use Foundatio.Repositories?

Building robust data access layers requires handling many cross-cutting concerns:

• Caching - How do you cache entities and invalidate them when they change?
• Notifications - How do you notify other parts of your system when data changes?
• Soft Deletes - How do you implement soft deletes consistently across all queries?
• Versioning - How do you handle optimistic concurrency?
• Querying - How do you build dynamic, user-facing queries safely?

Foundatio.Repositories solves all of these problems with a cohesive, well-tested implementation.

Architecture Overview

Key Features

Repository Pattern

Clean interfaces that abstract data access:

• IReadOnlyRepository<T> - Read operations (Get, Find, Count, Exists)
• IRepository<T> - Write operations (Add, Save, Remove, Patch)
• ISearchableRepository<T> - Dynamic querying with filters, sorting, and aggregations

Elasticsearch Implementation

Full-featured Elasticsearch support:

• Index configuration with schema versioning
• Daily and monthly index strategies for time-series data
• Parent-child document relationships
• Custom field mappings and analyzers

Built on Foundatio

Leverages Foundatio's battle-tested building blocks:

• Caching - Distributed cache with automatic invalidation
• Messaging - Entity change notifications via message bus
• Locking - Distributed locks for coordination
• Queues - Background job processing

Developer Experience

• Async/await throughout
• Strongly-typed queries with lambda expressions
• Comprehensive event system for extensibility
• Detailed logging and diagnostics

Use Cases

Foundatio.Repositories is ideal for:

• Multi-tenant SaaS applications - Soft deletes, custom fields, tenant isolation
• Event-driven architectures - Real-time notifications via message bus
• Search-heavy applications - Full Elasticsearch query capabilities
• High-traffic systems - Built-in caching and performance optimizations

Related Projects

• Foundatio - Core building blocks (caching, messaging, queues, jobs)
• Foundatio.Parsers - Query parsing for dynamic filtering

Next Steps

• Getting Started - Install and create your first repository
• Repository Pattern - Understand the core interfaces
• Elasticsearch Setup - Configure your Elasticsearch connection