Stop Handing Over Your Entire Wallet: DTOs in .NET Explained

Let’s say you go to a coffee shop. Your coffee costs $5. Do you hand the barista your entire wallet, let them dig through your credit cards, embarrassing old photos, and loose change, and just trust them to only take the $5? Of course not. You pull out exactly what they need — the five-dollar bill — and hand it over. If you are building APIs in .NET and returning your database entities directly to the user, you are basically handing the frontend your entire wallet. You’re exposing things you sho