Lightweight, Fast and Alternative.
About · Documentation · Nuget

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About

Swytch is a web framework written in C#. It is lightweight, fast and offers an alternative and refreshing way to author web services like REST APIs, web applications and static sites.It provides an expressive routing API, built-in templating with RazorLight, support for asynchronous job processing using Actors, and seamless database integration with Dapper.

I started Swytch as an educational project to explore C# as a language and to experiment with a lightweight alternative for building simple web services or hacking on personal projects without the overhead of ASP.NET/ASP.NET CORE. It has been a rewarding experience, and I learned a lot along the way. I work on Swytch in my spare time, balancing it with my professional life and the other million things I have on my desk. It took almost a year to get Swytch to a point where I felt it was stable enough to share. Since I only work on this when I can afford to, I kindly ask for patience when raising issues or reporting bugs. I'll address them as soon as I can.

Check out the documentation for more information

Check out the devlogs and architectural notes

Features

• Minimal and Expressive Routing – Define routes and handler methods easily with a clean API.
• Path Parameters – Extract parameters directly from the URL for dynamic routing.
• Templating with RazorLight – Supports Razor-based templating for rendering dynamic content.
• Precompiled Templates – Improves performance by precompiling Razor templates before execution.
• Built-in Lightweight ORM – Includes Dapper for efficient database interaction.
• Asynchronous Job Processing – Allows users to execute background and non-blocking tasks using Actors.
• Resilient Request Handling – Exceptions occurring during a request are isolated to that request, preventing failures from affecting the entire application.
• Middleware Support – Extend functionality by adding middleware for request/response processing.
• Fast and Lightweight – Designed for high performance with minimal overhead.

📦 Installation

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Install Swytch via NuGet:

 dotnet add package Swytch

Swytch supports .NET 6+.

Basic Swytch Api

Create a basic Swytch application:

//create a swytchapp
var app = new SwytchApp();

//set up route 
app.AddAction("GET", "/", async (context) => {
    context.ToOk("Welcome to Swytch!");
});

//start app
await swytchApp.Listen(); 

Run the application and navigate to http://localhost:8080/.

Routing & Handlers

Define dynamic routes with path parameters:

app.AddAction("GET","/users/{id}", async (context) => { 
    //get the id value
    var id = context.PathParams["id"];
});



app.AddAction("POST","/users/{id}", async (context) => { 
  //get the id value
   string userId;
   if(context.PathParams.TryGetValue("id", out userId)){
        //use here 
   }
});


//Register multiple HTTP methods to one handler
app.AddAction("GET,POST","/users/{id}", async (context) => { 
    //get the id value
    var id = context.PathParams["id"];
)};

Middleware

Register middleware

app.AddMiddleware(async (context) =>
{
    Console.WriteLine("Incoming request...");
});

Templating with RazorLight

Use RazorLight to render dynamic template file:

await app.RenderTemplate(context, "templateKey", Books);

Background Jobs (Actors)

Execute background tasks using Actors:

//Initialize actor pool and register an actor
ActorPool.InitializeActorPool(serviceProvider);
ActorPool.Register<TalkingActor>();


//Execute task using actor
 ActorPool.Tell<TalkingActor,string>("Home");

Database Integration (Dapper)

Query databases easily using Dapper:

//Add data store 
swytchApp.AddDatastore("your_connection_string", DatabaseProviders.SQLite);

//execute query
 using IDbConnection dbConnection = app.GetConnection(DatabaseProviders.SQLite);
 var users = await dbConnection.QueryAsync<User>("SELECT * FROM Users");

Contributing

Contributions are highly valued(seriously), whether it's proposing new features, suggesting improvements, or reporting bugs. Your input helps make Swytch even better — feel free to submit a PR!