Recipe Catalog Web API

Project roadmap

1. 01

   Create the project and models

   ~1.5h

   Create an ASP.NET Core Web API project (.NET 8 or newer) with controllers. Define the entities Recipe (id, title, description, servings, prep minutes, steps as text), Ingredient (id, recipe id, name, quantity, unit) and Tag (id, unique name), where a recipe has many ingredients and recipes and tags are linked many-to-many. Done when: the project builds with the entity classes.

2. 02

   Set up EF Core with SQLite

   ~1.5h

   Add Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite and the design package. Create a RecipesDbContext, configure the relationships and a unique index on the tag name, and set the connection string in appsettings.json. Create the first migration and apply it with dotnet ef database update. Seed about 10 recipes with tags. Done when: the database file is created with the seeded recipes.

3. 03

   Implement the CRUD endpoints

   ~2.5h

   Create a RecipesController with GET /api/recipes/{id}, POST, PUT and DELETE. Use DTOs for requests and responses (for example RecipeDto and CreateRecipeRequest) instead of returning entities directly, which avoids exposing internal fields and loops in JSON. Load ingredients and tags with Include. Return 201 with a Location header on create, 404 when not found and 204 on delete. Done when: all endpoints work in Swagger with the right status codes.

4. 04

   Add filtering and pagination

   ~2h

   Make GET /api/recipes accept ?tag=, ?ingredient= (matching part of an ingredient name), ?maxPrepMinutes=, ?page= and ?pageSize= (default 10, maximum 50). Build the query with IQueryable so filtering and paging happen in SQL, order by title, and return the items with totalCount, page and pageSize. Done when: filtering and paging return the right recipes, and the SQL logs show filtering in the database.

5. 05

   Validate input and handle errors

   ~1.5h

   Add data annotations to the request DTOs (title required, 3 to 100 characters; servings 1 to 50; at least one ingredient), so invalid requests automatically return 400 with ProblemDetails. Add a global exception handler (UseExceptionHandler) that turns unexpected errors into a 500 ProblemDetails without a stack trace. Done when: invalid input gets clear 400 responses, and a forced error returns a clean 500.

6. 06

   Write integration tests

   ~2h

   Create an xUnit test project using WebApplicationFactory, replacing the database with a SQLite in-memory connection that is kept open for the test. Test creating a recipe, getting it back with its ingredients and tags, filtering by tag, paging, validation errors and deleting. Done when: dotnet test passes.

Resources

• DocsTutorial: create a web API with ASP.NET Core
• DocsEF Core relationships
• DocsEF Core migrations
• DocsIntegration tests in ASP.NET Core