Building & Using .NET SDKs: A Developer’s Guide

Let’s end this series by doing something powerful: building a .NET SDK that others (and your future self) can use in multiple projects.

SDKs make your business logic reusable, testable, and open-source friendly; whether it’s for payments, notifications, or cron parsing.

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🧠 What is a .NET SDK?

An SDK (Software Development Kit) in .NET is typically:

• A class library project
• Packaged into a NuGet package
• Used across multiple applications
• Published locally or on NuGet.org

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🛠️ Step 1: Create the SDK Project

dotnet new classlib -n MyAwesomeSdk

Add your logic:

public class HelloService
{
    public string Greet(string name) => $"Hello, {name}!";
}

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🔁 Step 2: Reference the SDK in Another Project

dotnet add reference ../MyAwesomeSdk/MyAwesomeSdk.csproj

Now you can use it like:

var service = new HelloService();
Console.WriteLine(service.Greet("Tunde"));

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📦 Step 3: Pack and Publish to NuGet

Add metadata to .csproj:

<PropertyGroup>
  <TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>
  <PackageId>MyAwesomeSdk</PackageId>
  <Version>1.0.0</Version>
  <Authors>TundeHub</Authors>
  <Description>A simple reusable SDK</Description>
</PropertyGroup>

Then:

dotnet pack -c Release
dotnet nuget push bin/Release/*.nupkg -k YOUR_API_KEY -s https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json

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💡 Best Practices for SDKs

• 🔌 Keep dependencies minimal
• 🧪 Include unit tests in a separate test project
• 📄 Add XML docs and usage examples
• 💬 Use semantic versioning
• 🔐 Avoid hardcoding secrets or connection strings

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🧰 Bonus: Open-Source Ready

Create a README like:

# MyAwesomeSdk

A lightweight SDK for greeting humans.

## Install

```bash
dotnet add package MyAwesomeSdk

Usage

var service = new HelloService();
service.Greet("World");

```

Publish to GitHub, tag a release, and you’re official 🎉

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✅ Series Complete!

You’ve gone from setup to scaling, from basics to background tasks, from controllers to SDKs.

This isn’t just theory — you’ve built a full, scalable architecture using ASP.NET Core.

📌 Save or bookmark this series
💬 Share your progress
🛠 Build something great — and share it with the world

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Let’s keep pushing boundaries, writing clean code, and supporting each other as devs 💙