Question:

I often work on Web API projects using .NET, and I find the idea of allowing clients to specify which data fields to retrieve—similar to GraphQL—quite intriguing. However, I haven’t come across any libraries that support this in RESTful APIs. I’m wondering if this idea is considered outdated.

GET /api/User/?fields=name&fields=Email&populate[Role][fields]=name

And receive:

{
        "name": "John Doe",
        "email": "[email protected]",
        ...
        "role": {
            "name": "Admin"
          ...
        }
}

So, I created a simple .NET library to handle this. Contributions and feedback are welcome! GitHub: https://github.com/Authentic199/Population.NET.

I’d love to hear insights from those who’ve implemented similar APIs or considered dynamic field selection as part of their API design.

I tried searching for similar library but couldn’t find any, so I look forward to everyone’s opinion