Unit of Work

The unit of work pattern for ASP.NET Core is implemented using a combination of TransactionAttribute and AutoTransactionHandler.

TransactionAttribute is a marker attribute used to configure the unit of work for a controller action; it does not implement any transaction management itself. It configures the following parameters:

• isolation level;
• whether the transaction is committed or rolled back in case of a model validation error.

AutoTransactionHandler is an MVC action filter that wraps a controller action in a transaction, using the settings from the [Transaction] attribute applied to that action or its controller. It commits the transaction on success and rolls it back on an unhandled exception (and, optionally, on a model-validation error).

Best practices

• Apply [Transaction] at the controller or action level. Applying it globally will cause a transaction to be opened on every request, including requests that don’t need one.
• Register AutoTransactionHandler globally, as an MVC filter. It is stateless, so registering it as a singleton reduces memory allocations and improves performance.