For a long time, I relied heavily on AutoMapper in my projects. It’s a great library, no doubt about it. However, after the recent license changes, I started exploring alternatives.

I even went as far as mapping objects manually—while that approach works and removes any external dependencies, the drawbacks quickly add up. In large codebases where models evolve frequently, maintaining all those manual mappings becomes a real headache.

That’s why I decided to build something lightweight and easy to use. And that’s how TacoMapper was born.

How do I try TacoMapper?

The good news is, TacoMapper is available on NuGet, so installing it is as easy as:

dotnet add package TacoMapper --version 1.0.1 # The latest version as of today.

Once installed, you can start mapping objects using the ObjectMapper (I’ll probably rename this class soon—it predates the library name 😅):

var personDto = ObjectMapper.Map<Person, PersonDto>(person);

You can also use a fluent API to define your mappings in a more expressive way:

var mapper = ObjectMapper.Create<Person, PersonDto>()
    .Map(dest => dest.Id, src => src.Id)
    .Map(dest => dest.Email, src => src.Email)
    .Map(dest => dest.Age, src => src.DateOfBirth, dob => DateTime.Now.Year - dob.Year)
    .Map(dest => dest.Status, src => src.IsActive, active => active ? "Active" : "Inactive")
    .Combine(dest => dest.FullName, src => $"{src.FirstName} {src.LastName}");

var result = mapper.MapFrom(person);

Documentation

TacoMapper comes with clean, minimal documentation built entirely with StarLight. You can check it out at: https://barrientos.io/TacoMapper

What’s next?

While TacoMapper is already up and running, there’s still plenty to improve—things like support for dependency injection and other nice-to-have features. The library is actively being developed, so if this project caught your attention and you’d like to contribute, head over to the GitHub repo and send a pull request!

Resources

• GitHub: https://github.com/tavobarrientos/TacoMapper
• NuGet: https://www.nuget.org/packages/TacoMapper
• Docs: https://barrientos.io/TacoMapper