A key aspect of adopting any new pattern is understanding how it interacts with the surrounding application infrastructure. When using Discriminated Unions, questions arise: How can a Result union be serialized to JSON? How can an OrderState union be persisted using Entity Framework Core? This article explores practical integration strategies with common .NET frameworks.
Domain models often involve concepts that exist in multiple distinct states or variations. Traditional approaches using enums and nullable properties can lead to invalid states and scattered logic. This article explores how discriminated unions provide a structured, type-safe way to model domain variants in .NET, aligning perfectly with Domain-Driven Design principles while enforcing invariants at the type level.
Traditional C# pattern matching with switch statements and if/else chains is error-prone and doesn’t guarantee exhaustive handling of all cases. When you add new types or states, it’s easy to miss updating conditional logic, leading to runtime bugs. The library Thinktecture.Runtime.Extensions solves this with built-in Switch and Map methods for discriminated unions that enforce compile-time exhaustiveness checking.
Representing values that may take on multiple distinct types or states is a common challenge in C#. Traditional approaches—like tuples, generics, or exceptions—often lead to clumsy and error-prone code. Discriminated unions address these issues by enabling clear, type-safe modeling of “one-of” alternatives. This article examines pitfalls of conventional patterns and introduces discriminated unions with the Thinktecture.Runtime.Extensions library, demonstrating how they enhance code safety, prevent invalid states, and improve maintainability—unlocking powerful domain modeling in .NET with minimal boilerplate.
