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Stack OverflowMost useful free .NET libraries?
[+687] [117] Binoj Antony
[2009-03-19 16:30:53]
[ .net library components free favorites ]
[ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/662956] [DELETED]

I have used a lot of free .NET libraries, some from Microsoft itself! Which ones have you found the most useful?

Mathematics

Package managers for external libraries

Build Tools

Dependency Injection/Inversion of Control

Logging

Validation

Design by Contract

Compression

Ajax

Data Mapper

ORM

Charting/Graphics

PDF Creators/Generators

Unit Testing/Mocking

Automated Web Testing

Misc Testing/Quality Support/Behavior Driven Development (BDD)

URL Rewriting

Web Debugging

Controls

MS Word/Excel Documents Manipulation

Social Media

Serialisation

Machine learning

Unclassified

[EDIT]
Please provide links to these free libraries as well. Once we have a huge list of this, it can be arranged in categories! Please do not mention .NET Applications/EXEs here.

This question has historical significance, but is not a good example of an appropriate question. Read and learn from this post, but please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions.

See the FAQ [109] for more info.

You are mistaken regarding inprocess database servers. They cannot, by definition, exist except as a component of another application. - overslacked
(3) they shouldn't be called "servers" in the first place - Lucas
(2) I didn't name them; but they're useful, free, and as valid for inclusion as anything else on this list. - overslacked
@overslacked, i'm sorry if i wasn't clear, i agree with you 100%... i was just making an observation about the misleading name :) - Lucas
What's the meaning of the tag "COTS"? - M4N
(2) Commercial off the shelf - Binoj Antony
What is the tag "cots" supposed to be? It is not really useful. - Sung
(1) Does anyone have links to free or open-source image processing libraries? - Sung
@Sung Meister ImageMagick is very popular. imagemagick.org - Mattio
(3) I know jQuery isn't exactly a .net library; but now as it shipped with Visual Studio and as it popularity grows as a robust Ajax libray, its only natural to include it under AJAX above. - renegadeMind
(6) Why are the lists numbered? It seems to imply some kind of ordering or priority when there is none. I'd change it to bulleted lists. - Mauricio Scheffer
@Mauricio I don’t know, but changing that is a PITA. ;) I suppose the numbers reflect the order in which they were added. - Martín Marconcini
(1) I took the liberty of doing it for you. Took 2 minutes in Notepad++ with the macro recorder. ;) - alimbada
@alimbada: thanks! - Mauricio Scheffer
(1) I was hoping there would be an open source reporting tool in the list (ie banded reporting tools) - Mark Redman
The Krypton link is dead, is this project still available? You might also want to add the DevExpress Free 60 Controls - aolszowka
PetaPoco should be added to mappers. - Robert Koritnik
(2) Why was this closed??? This should be reopenned! - Lucas B
I appreciate bringing this question and its answer is very informative. - Lijo
[+104] [2009-03-19 16:33:53] irperez
  1. Ajax Control Toolkit [1]
  2. ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome [2] (ajax toolkit for asp.net mvc)
  3. Silverlight Toolkit [3]
  4. nUnit [4]
  5. Rhino Mocks [5] (Unit Test against Fake Resources)
  6. Moq [6] (Unit Test against Fake Resources Alternative)
  7. Flickr.Net [7]
  8. Live Services SDK [8]
  9. Facebook Developer Toolkit [20]
  10. Castle Windsor [21] (DI)
  11. Open XML SDK 2.0 [22] (Create/Edit Word/Excel/PowerPoint 2007 Formats)
  12. CSLA Framework [23] (Business Objects Framework)
  13. TypeMock.Net [24] (Another Mocking framework)
  14. Silverlight.FX [25] (Additional Silverlight Controls)
  15. ScriptSharp [26] (A Javascript Framework)
[1] http://www.codeplex.com/AjaxControlToolkit
[2] http://awesome.codeplex.com
[3] http://www.codeplex.com/silverlight
[4] http://www.nunit.org
[5] http://ayende.com/projects/rhino-mocks.aspx
[6] http://code.google.com/p/moq/
[7] http://flickrnet.codeplex.com/
[8] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264574.aspx?ppud=4
[9] http://dev.live.com/liveframework/
[10] http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/
[11] http://dev.live.com/livesearch/
[12] http://dev.live.com/messenger/
[13] http://dev.live.com/liveid/
[14] http://dev.live.com/silverlight/
[15] http://dev.live.com/admincenter/
[16] http://dev.live.com/spaces/
[17] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd179336.aspx
[18] http://dev.live.com/contacts/
[19] http://dev.live.com/feedsync/
[20] http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/
[21] http://www.castleproject.org/container/index.html
[22] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c6e744e5-36e9-45f5-8d8c-331df206e0d0&DisplayLang=en
[23] http://www.lhotka.net/
[24] http://www.typemock.com
[25] http://projects.nikhilk.net/SilverlightFX
[26] http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp

1
[+62] [2009-03-19 17:44:43] Gulzar Nazim

ELMAH [1]

ELMAH (Error Logging Modules and Handlers) is an application-wide error logging facility that is completely pluggable. It can be dynamically added to a running ASP.NET web application, or even all ASP.NET web applications on a machine, without any need for re-compilation or re-deployment.

Update: To work with Asp.Net MVC [2]

[1] http://code.google.com/p/elmah/
[2] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ELMAHErrorLoggingModulesAndHandlersForASPNETAndMVCToo.aspx

2
[+51] [2009-03-19 17:19:38] Joe

The Microsoft .NET Framework [1]. I'd never get any work done without its libraries.

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa569263.aspx

(14) I never get to come up with a smart-ass answer... - Sung
(5) could not help but laugh - dbones
3
[+45] [2009-03-19 16:45:44] overslacked

In-process database servers make my life easier.

SQLite [1]

SQL Server Compact Edition [2]

[1] http://www.sqlite.org/
[2] http://www.microsoft.com/Sqlserver/2005/en/us/compact.aspx

(7) They ARE libraries, not full applications or system services like SQL Server Express/Standard/Enterprise. - Lucas
(1) ... and free, too - Lucas
4
[+37] [2009-03-19 16:37:28] Canavar
  1. Log4Net [1] for Logging
  2. Watin [2] for Web Application Testing
  3. Ajax.NET Pro [3] for AJAX Framework. (Very successful alternative to Ajax Toolkit)
  4. Json.NET [4] JSON library for .NET
  5. HTML Agility Pack [5] for parsing HTML files.
[1] http://logging.apache.org/log4net/index.html
[2] http://watin.sourceforge.net/
[3] http://www.codeplex.com/AjaxPro
[4] http://www.codeplex.com/Json
[5] http://www.codeplex.com/htmlagilitypack

(2) Please mention what it is used for. - Binoj Antony
5
[+36] [2009-03-19 20:02:40] CmdrTallen

Subsonic [1]. An open source object-relational mapper.

[1] http://subsonicproject.com/

6
[+31] [2009-03-19 16:44:00] Gordon Bell

Microsoft Chart Controls [1] for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=130F7986-BF49-4FE5-9CA8-910AE6EA442C&displaylang=en

7
[+24] [2009-03-20 03:34:34] Matt Olenik

I have found that the C5 Collections [1] library is the most extensive and well designed collections framework for .NET.

[1] http://www.itu.dk/research/c5/

+1 Looks very interesting! - Dog Ears
I agree, definately one of the best, if not THE best, collection library out there. - JohannesH
Dont forget PowerCollections.NET. I was an avid user but a lot of requirement for it goes away with LINQ to objects / C# 3 - Ruben Bartelink
8
[+22] [2009-04-16 11:57:59] CraigTP

For me, by far and away the single most useful library is:

System.Data.SQLite [1]

Perfect for websites on a shared hosting package with fairly "light" database needs.

[1] http://sqlite.phxsoftware.com/

(5) I love the fact that the same assembly contains the native SQLite engine AND the managed ADO.NET provider... - Thomas Levesque
9
[+20] [2009-03-19 20:46:17] Gordon Bell

AForge.net [1]

AForge.NET is a C# framework designed for developers and researchers in the fields of Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence - image processing, neural networks, genetic algorithms, machine learning, robotics, etc.

[1] http://www.aforgenet.com/framework/

Wow, this looks awesome, thanks! - Matt Olenik
10
[+18] [2010-07-02 07:53:07] MadBoy

Word / Documents:

  1. DocX [1] to create, read, manipulate formatted word documents. Easy syntax, working nicely, actively developed. No Microsoft Office necessary.

Compression

  1. SevenZipSharp [2] to pack, unpack a lot of different packages.

Excel Spreadsheets

  1. Excel XML Writer [3] allows creation of .XLS (Excel) files. No Microsoft Office necessary. Been a while since it has been updated. It also provides code generator [4] to create code from already created XLS file (saved as xml). Haven't tested this but looks very promising. Too bad author is long time gone.

  2. Excel Reader [5] allows creation/reading of .XLS (Excel) files. No Microsoft Office necessary. Been a while since it has been updated.

  3. Excel Package [6] allows creation/reading of .XLSX (Excel 2007) files. No Microsoft Office necessary. Author is gone so it's out of date.

  4. EPPlus [7] is based on Excel Package and allows creation/reading of .XLSX (Excel 2007). It is actually my favorite when it comes to Excel. It's actively developed and so far have been able to do most things i needed (which I can't say the same about 3-5 packages), but it's only limited to .XLSX (which from one side is good thing). I'm still testing it thou :-)

  5. NPOI [8] is the .NET version of POI Java project at http://poi.apache.org/. POI is an open source project which can help you read/write xls, doc, ppt files.
[1] http://docx.codeplex.com/
[2] http://sevenzipsharp.codeplex.com/
[3] http://www.carlosag.net/Tools/ExcelXmlWriter/
[4] http://www.carlosag.net/Tools/ExcelXmlWriter/Generator.aspx
[5] http://www.codeproject.com/KB/office/ExcelReader.aspx
[6] http://excelpackage.codeplex.com/
[7] http://epplus.codeplex.com/
[8] http://npoi.codeplex.com/

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[+17] [2009-03-19 17:38:08] slolife

NLog [1] for logging

[1] http://www.nlog-project.org/

12
[+17] [2009-03-19 16:36:45] BC.
[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd140117.aspx
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency%5Finjection
[3] http://logging.apache.org/log4net/
[4] http://code.google.com/p/elmah/
[5] http://www.hibernate.org/343.html

If you want to use linq to entities, you can use NHibernate with NHibernate Linq extension. - NetSide
13
[+16] [2009-03-19 18:38:55] Lucas

Dependency Injection: Ninject [1]

Web MVC framework: ASP.NET MVC [2] (1.0 released yesterday!)

Client MVP-ish (or is that MVVM?) framework: patterns & practices Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight, aka Prism [3] (v2 released Feb 2009)

[1] http://ninject.org/
[2] http://www.asp.net/mvc/
[3] http://www.codeplex.com/CompositeWPF

After going through the samples in detail, I think it's MVCP-VM ;) - Richard Szalay
Wow, thanks for the Ninject link, it looks really useful. - Tamás Szelei
14
[+13] [2009-03-19 16:49:34] Sung

For PDF, other than PDFSharp,

iTextSharp [1]

[1] http://itextsharp.sourceforge.net/

iTextSharp is great! It has saved me a lot of time instead of dealing with browsers printing web pages differently. - wsanville
I hate that Affero GPL licence though - MarkJ
15
[+13] [2009-05-29 04:32:18] JSmyth

Lucene.net [1] -> For text indexing/searching

[1] http://incubator.apache.org/lucene.net/

16
[+13] [2009-06-11 13:11:24] Hugo Assanti

Postsharp [1] for aspect-oriented programming [2] (AOP) or policy injection.

[1] http://www.postsharp.org/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect-oriented%5Fprogramming

It's not free (anymore) ? - gsharp
17
[+12] [2009-03-19 17:53:47] Andrew Moore

Microsoft Chart Controls for WinForms [1]

A free high quality charting library for .NET supported by Microsoft.

[1] http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/mschart

18
[+12] [2009-03-20 04:37:03] Luke Lowrey

How about:

Recaptcha [1] - captcha control

url rewriter [2] - open source URL rewriting

UrlRewriting.Net [3] - another URL rewriter

GoogleMaps.Subgurim.NET [4] - Google maps server control

[1] http://recaptcha.net/plugins/aspnet/
[2] http://urlrewriter.net/
[3] http://www.urlrewriting.net/
[4] http://en.googlemaps.subgurim.net/

19
[+12] [2010-02-04 20:49:27] John Sheehan

I've created a new library for making it easier to consume REST APIs in .NET: RestSharp [1]

[1] http://restsharp.org

(3) RestSharp is great. - Ryan Farley
20
[+12] [2010-06-03 13:16:38] adopilot

Nini [1] is an uncommonly powerful .NET configuration library designed to help build highly configurable applications quickly. Generally it is about INI files.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/nini/

+1 for the nini. - HuseyinUslu
21
[+11] [2009-04-16 12:39:01] Steve

ZedGraph [1] for graphing.

[1] http://zedgraph.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main%5FPage

22
[+10] [2009-03-19 16:37:37] Gordon Bell

Krypton Toolkit [1] - Windows Forms Controls

[1] http://www.componentfactory.com/free-windows-forms-controls.php

Please explain what it is used for. - Binoj Antony
GUI elements (buttons, forms etc.) The KT core is free. - boj
+1 Of all the libraries listed, this is the only one I use in every WinForms project I create. Really gives an app a professional look. - Michael Itzoe
23
[+10] [2009-06-30 14:09:58] Ben

HTML Parsing : Html Agility Pack [1]

[1] http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/

24
[+10] [2010-10-04 12:22:29] dbones

I do not think these have been mentioned

[1] http://www.dotnetopenauth.net/
[2] http://github.com/dotless/dotless

Dot less looks awesome, thanks! - KallDrexx
25
[+10] [2010-11-19 09:19:41] Marko

NBuilder [1]

"Through a fluent, extensible interface, NBuilder allows you to rapidly create test data, automatically assigning values to properties and public fields that are of type of the built in .NET data types (e.g. ints and strings). NBuilder allows you to override for properties you are interested in using lambda expressions."

[1] http://nbuilder.org/

looks pretty cool, is what i am needing now. - Benny
That is awesome! Thanks! - KallDrexx
(1) link for this nbuilder.org - Andreas Hoffmann
link is in the title Andreas ;) - Marko
26
[+9] [2009-09-12 23:12:18] Chad Ruppert

I'd like to add AutoMapper [1] to the list, as tooling. It's so useful if you are doing any kind of application development where you are mapping DTOs or Update/View Models to domain object. It is convention based, and lets you do some awesome object mapping so easily.

[1] http://www.codeplex.com/AutoMapper

27
[+9] [2009-03-20 11:55:26] pirho

Quartz.NET - Enterprise Job Scheduler for .NET Platform [1]

[1] http://quartznet.sourceforge.net/

28
[+8] [2009-04-27 13:36:36] Todd Stout

IKVM [1] brings the extensive world of Java libraries to .NET.

[1] http://www.ikvm.net/

I've used it; it's truly amazing. If the startup speed hit isn't a dealbreaker, it gives you access to a larger world. - TrueWill
@TrueWill Startup time has never been an issue for me. Do you find slow startup times after using ikvmc to compile the jars to assemblies? - Todd Stout
29
[+8] [2009-04-16 12:27:36] Quibblesome

OpenNETCF [1], essential if you're working with Compact Framework and makes work there much less gruesome.

[1] http://opennetcf.com/

30
[+7] [2009-03-19 17:39:47] Gordon Bell

Google Data APIs Client Library [1]

[1] http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/clientlibs.html

(2) Why was this down voted? Google offers a .NET library for their API on that very page. - Matt Olenik
31
[+7] [2010-06-02 20:49:38] Darin Dimitrov

I can't believe nobody suggested FluentValidation [1] so far.

[1] http://fluentvalidation.codeplex.com/

32
[+6] [2009-04-16 11:56:34] Lucas Jones

Well, Jon Skeet's MiscUtil [1], of course!

[1] http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/miscutil/

33
[+5] [2009-03-23 06:26:35] Cheeso

DotNetZip [1] for ZIP file handling.

[1] http://dotnetzip.codeplex.com

34
[+5] [2009-05-29 13:27:39] docflabby

For 3D graphics OpenTK is probably the best for OpenGL [1].

OpenTK [2] (OpenGL for .NET and Mono [3].)

SlimDx [4] (Managed DirectX, great altenative to XNA [5].)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL
[2] http://www.opentk.com/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono%5F%28software%29
[4] http://slimdx.mdxinfo.com/
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft%5FXNA

35
[+5] [2009-09-12 23:18:15] Marc Gravell

Unclassified (specifically, serialization)

[1] http://www.codeplex.com/Json
[2] http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-net/
[3] http://github.com/jskeet/dotnet-protobufs/tree/master

Json.NET is a really handy library. - Alek Davis
36
[+5] [2010-09-30 10:16:55] DrDro

ExcelLibrary [1] is a really light and simple library to create and read .xls file. It has little formatting options though.

Code example to export a dataset to an Excel file :

ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook(@"C:\report.xls", myDataset);
[1] http://code.google.com/p/excellibrary/

I've used this with great success on a side project. Lets you run linq queries directly against Excel spreadsheets. code.google.com/p/linqtoexcel - Tim Coker
37
[+5] [2010-10-07 11:44:01] Manaf Abu.Rous

Since you added LinqToTwitter I think it would only be fair to add the following libraries

.NET Facebook API Client [1]

A .NET client library for the Facebook API that allows developers to create Facebook Applications in C# and VB.NET with support for ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC.

Facebook Developer Toolkit [2]

This toolkit is provided as a Facebook Client Library similar to Facebook’s PHP Client Library or Facebook’s javascript library. The goal is to enable .NET developers to quickly and easily leverage the various features of the Facebook Platform.

[1] http://facebook.codeplex.com/
[2] http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/

38
[+4] [2010-02-04 21:13:50] Hmobius

For all your syndication & social networking needs

  • RSS Toolkit [1] : Covers publication and consumption of RSS feeds, building classes for a specific feed. Good for working with one or two feeds
  • Argotic Syndication Framework [2] : Much more useful than RSS toolkit for dealing with RSS and ATOM feeds in a generic way.
  • Tweetsharp [3] : Fluent interface to the Twitter API. Very actively developed.
  • Facebook Developer Toolkit [4] : .NET API for Facebook. v3 released last week.
[1] http://www.codeplex.com/ASPNETRSSToolkit
[2] http://argotic.codeplex.com/
[3] http://tweetsharp.com/
[4] http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/

39
[+4] [2011-01-10 12:05:42] CJM

I'd add The Object Guy's .NET Logging Framework [1] (Bitfactory.Logging).

Compared to many others, it's quite lightweight - extremely quick and easy to set up, and will more than cover all the necessary bases for many projects that don't want/need the complexity of some other logging frameworks.

[1] http://www.theobjectguy.com/DotNetLog/

Nice addition. I've used it for about a year and have loved it. I prefer it to Log4Net... by a wide margin. - Mike L
I know Log4Net rightly has it's fans, but it (and some others) are two complex and encumbered for some people on some projects, myself included - always nice to have alternatives! - CJM
40
[+4] [2011-01-20 16:06:02] Glum

NAudio [1] is audio and MIDI library.

Features:

  • Play back audio using a variety of APIs
  • Decompress audio from different Wave Formats using ACM codecs
  • Record audio using WaveIn or WASAPI
  • Read and Write standard .WAV files
  • Mix and manipulate audio streams
    using a 32 bit mixing engine
  • Support for reading from a variety of audio file-formats including: MP3, SoundFont, MIDI, SFZ
  • Extensive support for reading and writing MIDI files
  • Full MIDI event model
  • Basic support for Windows Mixer APIs
  • A collection of Windows Forms Controls useful for .NET
  • Some basic audio effects, including a compressor
[1] http://naudio.codeplex.com/

41
[+4] [2011-06-21 19:33:54] Cybernate

PetaPoco [1], a tiny, fast, single-file micro-ORM similar to dapper-dot-net

[1] http://www.toptensoftware.com/petapoco/

42
[+4] [2009-06-01 17:04:46] Chalkey

DevExpress has 60 free controls (both ASP.NET and WinForms)... definitely check them out...

DevExpress 60 Free Controls [1]

Thanks :)

[1] http://www.devexpress.com/Products/Free/WebRegistration60/

I was about to remove this from the question then looked for this answer. Man they don't provide a single mention of "free" in their entire website until you click on that link :) - Earlz
no suprise there. still the free ones are great and worthy of adding to the toolbox. - Anonymous Type
43
[+4] [2009-09-09 22:13:16] Alek Davis

You've got all of my favorite libraries covered. Here is my humble attempt to share a collection of utilities I wrote over the years and reused across various projects:

My.Utilities Class Library [1]

This collection includes helper classes for ASP.NET web forms (time localization, etc), Windows services, error reporting, and more. Please read help file for detailed description and examples.

UPDATE: I just discovered a multi-purpose utilities library [2] by James Newton-King, which looks pretty handy.

[1] http://alekdavis.blogspot.com/2009/06/myutilities-class-library.html
[2] http://james.newtonking.com/projects/utilities-net.aspx

44
[+4] [2009-04-16 11:43:44] majkinetor

LuaInterface [1]

If you want to embed a small, fast, easy to learn and very poverful scripting language in .NET applications, this is the way to go.

Visual Web Gui [2]

The SDK includes the complete WinForms Toolkit, 58 WinForms Controls and integration into ASP.NET. It also includes the revolutionary Visual WebGui runtime which enables desktop application-like responsiveness and heavy-lifting abilities for data centric web applications supporting multiple presentation layers* from the same source code.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/luainterface/
[2] http://www.visualwebgui.com/Gizmox/Products/CommunitySDK/tabid/430/Default.aspx

45
[+3] [2009-03-19 16:32:57] JoshBerke

nHibernate sharp zLib


(2) Could you add links, please? - Jon B
46
[+3] [2010-01-28 07:22:53] Kane

Code generation and O/R Mapping [1]: My Generation [2].

(Sorry if this has already been posted.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping
[2] http://www.mygenerationsoftware.com/portal/default.aspx

47
[+3] [2010-02-04 20:35:18] Karthik Hariharan

Open Source Enterprise Service Bus Projects:

Mass Transit - http://masstransit.pbworks.com/

NServiceBus - http://www.nservicebus.com/


48
[+3] [2010-02-04 22:00:11] ILog

Spark View Engine [1] - a really good ASP.NET MVC (and not only) open source view engine.

[1] http://sparkviewengine.com/

49
[+3] [2010-02-04 22:29:23] Kevin Harder
  • XML-RPC.NET [1] by Cook Computing - A great open source XML-RPC library for dealing with services like Pingbacks and MetaWeblog API.

  • NVelocity [2] by the Castle Project - Super powerful templating library.

  • Janrain OpenID library

[1] http://www.xml-rpc.net/
[2] http://www.castleproject.org/others/nvelocity/index.html

50
[+3] [2009-06-10 05:02:21] RCIX

More of an XNA specific one but Farseer Physics [1] is a great XNA 2D physics library.

[1] http://farseerphysics.codeplex.com/

51
[+3] [2009-09-12 23:20:10] Colin

A great free Silverlight Charting library: Visifire [1]

[1] http://visifire.com/

52
[+3] [2009-05-22 21:46:09] Romias

HTML Agility Pack [1]. For scraping HTML and accesing it as XML.

ZedGraph [2]. For charting in web or Windows Forms [3].

[1] http://www.codeplex.com/htmlagilitypack
[2] http://zedgraph.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Forms

53
[+3] [2009-05-28 14:47:11] Curt Hagenlocher

It may push the boundaries of what's considered a "library", but as a longtime advocate of embedding scripting languages into LOB [1] applications, I'd say IronPython [2].

Disclaimer: I'm also biased. :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line%5Fof%5Fbusiness
[2] http://www.codeplex.com/ironpython

54
[+3] [2011-05-12 13:10:59] anthonyv

Glimpse [1] - What Firebug is for the client, Glimpse is for the server.

[1] http://getglimpse.com

55
[+3] [2010-11-17 13:38:56] Wilfred Knievel

SharpNLP [1] Handy for a spot of Natural Language Processing

NCrontab [2] or ncron [3] Handy for simple scheduling

[1] http://sharpnlp.codeplex.com/
[2] http://www.raboof.com/projects/ncrontab/
[3] http://code.google.com/p/ncron/

56
[+3] [2011-01-02 15:04:12] dbones

Noticed NuGet was added as a package manager

OpenWrap [1] - its another open source package manager (I am not sure if this has been mentioned before)

[1] https://github.com/openrasta/openwrap

57
[+3] [2010-04-08 11:10:57] PierrOz

two other cool free libraries I haven't seen in the list yet:

  • NPOI [1] which enable one to create/read/write excel files without having to install MS Office on your machine
  • Protobuf-net [2], developped by Marc Gravell, serialization library inspired by Procotol Buffer developped by Google.

And I don't remember if someone mentions Json.NET [3]... If not, here's the link !

[1] http://npoi.codeplex.com/
[2] http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-net/
[3] http://json.codeplex.com/Wikipage

58
[+3] [2010-06-02 20:45:43] Evan Plaice

SharpPcap [1] - .NET pcap wrapper to capture and parse network packets

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/sharppcap/

59
[+3] [2010-07-02 07:27:02] Ramesh

IBatis [1] is also XML-based Object/Relational mapping and persistence framework as well as a data access abstraction layer.This framework is available for .Net as well as Java too.

[1] http://ibatis.apache.org/

60
[+3] [2010-07-02 07:44:56] SiN

NodeXL [1] is a great open source library for computing and visualizing Network graphs. It includes an Excel template and a .NET library with a presentation library in WPF.

[1] http://nodexl.codeplex.com/

61
[+3] [2010-10-10 09:11:27] Andre Haverdings

Another useful ORM framework: ADO.NET Entity Framework [1]

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb399572.aspx

(5) Isn't it part of .net? - Vitalik
true, as of .net 3.5 SP1 - Andre Haverdings
It doesn't work on mono. Nhibernate does. - Quandary
"Doesn't work on mono" doesn't mean much usefulness-wise, considering Mono is not .net. - cHao
62
[+2] [2010-11-02 09:09:30] Sean Kearon

Caliburn [1] (a client framework for WPF and Silverlight) should certainly be in here.

[1] http://caliburn.codeplex.com/

63
[+2] [2010-11-02 09:37:12] Liviu M.

I found usefull the following:

  • CAB (Composite Application Block) - Microsoft
  • Log4net
  • nUnit
  • Rhino Mocks
  • SharpZipLib

All of these but CAB are already listed on the question. - Paul Ruane
64
[+2] [2010-10-01 10:41:07] DaveHogan

CruiseControl.Net ? - I don't think that's listed already?


(5) It's a build tool, not a library. Also, TeamCity or Hudson are far better tools, unless you enjoy spending forever writing .build files by hand... - alimbada
65
[+2] [2010-10-04 12:04:02] renjucool

BlogEngine.Net [1]

Blogger APIs [2]

Google Chart API [3]

[1] http://blogengine.codeplex.com/releases/view/39387
[2] http://code.google.com/apis/blogger/docs/2.0/developers_guide_dotnet.html
[3] http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

66
[+2] [2010-06-02 23:51:10] Kris Erickson

LinFu [1], a framework that adds mixins, inversion of control, and AOP (see also the CodeProject articles [2].)

[1] http://github.com/philiplaureano/LinFu
[2] http://www.codeproject.com/script/Articles/MemberArticles.aspx?amid=101687

67
[+2] [2010-02-04 21:38:12] Ryan Farley

DotNetTransitions [1] is a library that does control animation and transitions in a WinForm application. Very smooth and easy to use.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/dot-net-transitions/

68
[+2] [2010-12-06 16:35:57] fabraham

FileHelpers - http://filehelpers.sourceforge.net/ A Professional way to handle csv files and other separated documents into objects.

Xsd2Code - http://xsd2code.codeplex.com/ Good one to deal with XMLs. You can create objects from Schema and a professional way to read and write XML.


69
[+2] [2010-10-05 05:25:08] Manaf Abu.Rous

Sprite and Image Optimization Framework [1] for optimizing the website images

Currently still at Preview 2

It's a part of the ASP.NET MVC Framework project on codeplex, Works fine with WebForms too

[1] http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/50869

70
[+2] [2011-02-01 13:21:00] Daniel Lee

I think FluentMigrator [1] for database migrations is one of the most useful libraries out there. It's based on Ruby Migrations and is a great way to version control database changes.

[1] https://github.com/schambers/fluentmigrator/

71
[+2] [2011-02-05 13:13:53] HuseyinUslu

uhttpsharp [1] - a very basic embedded http server for .net.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/uhttpsharp/

Why would you use this? What does it offer? It looks very new since the source repository has only two commits. - Ray Hayes
Same question as Ray. On Windows every webserver should be built on http.sys. If its not something is wrong. - Steve
AFAIK http.sys requires at least Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. uhttpsharp code is extracted out one of our project's thinking of it can be useful to community (and that's the reason it has so few commits). There were alternatives around which were either too complicated or were not straight-forward. So we choose to go with our own simple solution. - HuseyinUslu
72
[+2] [2011-02-07 14:56:09] Simon G

Postal [1], this is a useful email generator based on MVC 3 and the Razor syntax. Provides an easy way of sending emails as well as dynamically creating emails.

[1] http://aboutcode.net/postal/

73
[+2] [2009-05-12 16:35:09] Samuel Jack

Gallio/MbUnit [1] for unit testing.

[1] http://gallio.org/

74
[+2] [2009-05-22 21:34:55] dario-g

ORM - Sooda (http://sooda.sourceforge.net/)

Sooda is object-relational mapping [1] software for the .NET (http://msdn.microsoft.com/net) environment. It lets you automatically generate an object-oriented data access layer (DAL) for your application. Instead of writing SQL code, you can now focus on writing business rules in object-oriented .NET languages.

Sooda is an open source software distributed under the terms of the BSD license.

I strongly recomend NLog which is very easy to use and very fast.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational%5Fmapping

75
[+2] [2009-04-27 17:27:14] Min

For me:

  • Fluent NHibernate
  • NHibernate
  • log4net
  • AutoFac

76
[+2] [2009-04-28 13:24:10] Pondidum

The Free and amazing SourceGrid [1]

[1] http://www.codeplex.com/sourcegrid/

77
[+2] [2009-05-29 16:32:06] community_owned

Microsoft Learning Components from Microsoft's SharePoint Learning Kit (www.codeplex.com/SLK) (E-Learning/SCORM libraries).

FreeImage.Net (freeimage.sourceforge.net/download.html) (.NET wrapper for FreeImage) -- I use this to get 4:4:4 subsampling for saving JPEGs.

(Can't post proper links yet.) :)


78
[+2] [2009-08-30 04:08:45] TrueWill

These are the ones of those listed that I've found useful:

  • DI/Ioc: Unity
  • Logging: Log4Net
  • Testing: NUnit, Moq
  • Unclassified: Json.NET (I've played around with this a little, but haven't used it extensively.)

(We use another O/RM, but it's no longer maintained.)

This is not to say that I've fully evaluated all of the alternatives!

Other libraries of note:

HtmlAgilityPack [1] (easy parsing of HTML)

Wow, this is hard if you leave out the EXEs and add-ins! :)

[1] http://www.codeplex.com/htmlagilitypack

(1) i vote for the htmlagilitypack. - HuseyinUslu
79
[+2] [2009-05-28 14:58:53] Saif Khan

DevExpress [1] also has a free set of controls.

[1] http://devexpress.com

unfortunately the free one aren't the most useful... - Thomas Levesque
true, but they are free. - Anonymous Type
80
[+2] [2009-09-09 21:59:25] ChristopheD

Math.NET Iridium

From their homepage:

Iridium is the numerical foundation of Math.NET, aiming to provide commonly used mathematical elements for scientific numerical computations. It offers the infrastructure for basic numerics, linear algebra, random generators and distributions, integral transformations, etc.

What I've used it for is PCA (Principal Component Analysis) (eigenvalue decomposition) which worked like a charm. License: LGPL. Self-contained (no extra dependencies).

Link: http://www.mathdotnet.com/Iridium.aspx


81
[+2] [2010-02-05 09:17:01] Simone Falconi

Quartz.NET [1] - Enterprise Job Scheduler for the .NET Platform.

[1] http://quartznet.sourceforge.net/

82
[+2] [2010-01-28 06:48:27] SetiSeeker

The Fast Artificial Neural Network Library (FANN) found at http://leenissen.dk/fann/ is great.

Nice list all.


83
[+2] [2009-03-19 16:43:45] Bryan Rowe

Two that have not been mentioned that I use a lot are:

Flee -- Expression Evaluator [1]

PDFSharp -- PDF Editing [2]

[1] http://www.codeplex.com/Flee
[2] http://pdfsharp.com/PDFsharp/

Do explain what it is, what is it used for. - Binoj Antony
I wasn't aware you were unable to click through the links -- hard task, I know. Also, your original post never requested that we describe what they do. - Bryan Rowe
84
[+2] [2009-03-19 21:25:17] w4ymo

I use the Spring Framework [1] and quite like it for dependency injection.

It can do most of every sub category you specified out of the box but does not have any Ajax [2] support. For that I use jQuery [3] and ASP.NET AJAX [4].

[1] http://www.springframework.net/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax%5F%28programming%29
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JQuery
[4] http://www.asp.net/ajax/

85
[+2] [2009-03-19 22:09:40] Paul Suart

The Ventaur Web Page Security project (available here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/web-security/WebPageSecurity%5Fv2.aspx) is incredibly useful for (ASP, admittedly) .NET.


86
[+2] [2009-03-20 04:30:28] Jonathan Parker

Automated web testing: Selenium [1]. It has support for .NET [2].

[1] http://seleniumhq.org
[2] http://seleniumhq.org/about/platforms.html#programming-languages

87
[+2] [2009-04-27 15:49:34] John Nolan

I can't see a link for mbUnit [1] which is a powerful alternative to NUnit [2].

[1] http://www.mbunit.com/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUnit

88
[+2] [2009-04-06 09:42:09] community_owned

nUnit [1] and Typemock Isolator [2]

[1] http://www.nunit.org/
[2] http://www.typemock.com/index.php

89
[+1] [2009-05-29 21:34:52] adopilot

Please correct me if I go wrong with Microsoft.ReportViewer [1].

[1] http://www.gotreportviewer.com/

90
[+1] [2009-05-29 14:04:51] Mark Lavin

TA-Lib [1] for those who love trading stocks using technical analysis.

[1] http://www.ta-lib.org/

91
[+1] [2011-04-15 23:13:45] Teoman Soygul

NBug [1] (Open source) - Automated bug, error, and exception reporting tool (with minidump generation capabilities). We use it most of our dekstop applications/projects (once it was just an internal tool).

[1] http://www.nbusy.com/projects/nbug

92
[+1] [2011-06-12 09:58:52] danyolgiax

NDesk.Options [1], Command line arguments parser.

Examples here [2]

[1] http://www.ndesk.org/Options
[2] http://www.ndesk.org/doc/ndesk-options/NDesk.Options/OptionSet.html

93
[+1] [2011-05-05 14:32:21] Ivan Korneliuk

Caliburn.Micro [1] - A small, yet powerful framework designed for WPF, Silverlight and WP7.

NotifyPropertyWeaver [2] - Uses IL weaving to inject INotifyPropertyChanged code into properties.

[1] http://caliburnmicro.codeplex.com/
[2] http://code.google.com/p/notifypropertyweaver/

94
[0] [2011-08-17 16:45:01] seveland

PDF Clown for PDF creation/manipulation.

http://www.stefanochizzolini.it/en/projects/clown/index.html


95
[0] [2011-06-18 21:42:18] jwJung

Math.NET Numerics [1] - From the homepage,

Math.NET Numerics is an open source numerical library for the .NET Framework and Mono. Numerics is the numerical foundation of the Math.NET project, aiming to provide methods and algorithms for numerical computations in science, engineering and every day use. Covered topics include special functions, linear algebra, probability models, random numbers, interpolation, integral transforms and more.

Numerics is the result of merging dnAnalytics with Math.NET Iridium and is intended to replace both. It targets Microsoft .Net 4.0 and Mono, and in addition to a purely managed implementation will also support native hardware optimization.

[1] http://mathnetnumerics.codeplex.com/

96
[0] [2011-05-13 17:20:09] Ricky Smith

Twitterizer [1] - A twitter API.

[1] http://www.twitterizer.net

97
[0] [2011-04-29 19:04:46] Cheeky

Piczard FREE Community Edition [1] - .NET image manipulation library (WYSIWYG image crop, resize, rotate/flip, color adjust, etc...)

[1] http://piczard.com

98
[0] [2011-03-22 12:00:58] Dublicator

Sharp2Word [1] is the .NET version of java2word [2] project. Sharp2Word is an open source project which can help you to write Word 2003 XML.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/sharp2word/
[2] http://code.google.com/p/java2word/

99
[0] [2011-03-24 11:56:31] Miguel Vitorino

Wintellect's Power Collections for .NET [1] provide several nice complementing generic collections and algorithms to the .NET framework ones, including (but not limited to): Deque, Bag, OrderedBag, Set, OrderedSet, Binary Search, Generate Permutations, etc.

Could go in the same category as C5 Collections.

[1] http://powercollections.codeplex.com/

100
[0] [2011-03-30 13:07:20] Greg Finzer

Here is our free stuff (from Kellerman Software):

Free Wrapper for SharpZip that zips directories: http://www.kellermansoftware.com/p-19-free-sharp-zip-wrapper.aspx

Library to perform deep compare of two .net objects: http://comparenetobjects.codeplex.com/

Library to run NUnit on Windows Phone 7 http://nunitwindowsphone7.codeplex.com/


101
[0] [2011-04-13 14:45:38] mcintyre321

Genuilder - Amazing code transformation library allowing creation of DSL, syntax enhancements AOP - http://genuilder.codeplex.com/


102
[0] [2011-04-13 16:23:36] Justin

There are a couple of other ORMs that I think should make this list:

CoolStorage [1] is one. It works on iPhone and Android as well (using Mono) which is pretty cool.

Another is Simple.Data [2] which looks very much like Active Record of RoR fame.

[1] http://viciproject.com/wiki/projects/coolstorage/home
[2] https://github.com/markrendle/Simple.Data

103
[0] [2011-04-14 15:50:34] Giovanni Galbo

Take a look at the data mapper I have on codeplex, Mapper Extensions [1]. Feel free to add it to the list if you find it useful :)

[1] http://mapperextensions.codeplex.com/

104
[0] [2010-11-10 17:33:11] codymanix

What about .NET PowerCollections? Or are C5 Collections which are already listed better?


105
[0] [2009-08-30 04:22:53] Troy Hunt

Sharp SVN [1] for Subversion operations is very good.

[1] http://sharpsvn.open.collab.net/

106
[0] [2009-08-30 13:06:13] Chris S

More ORMS

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa697427%28VS.80%29.aspx
[2] http://www.db4o.com/
[3] http://sooda.sourceforge.net/
[4] http://www.codeplex.com/PuzzleNPersist
[5] http://www.codeplex.com/odx/
[6] http://www.codeplex.com/CoolStorage
[7] http://www.mindscape.co.nz/products/LightSpeed/

Con you add a description please? - Mendy
107
[0] [2009-09-04 21:24:30] Thomas Maierhofer

Spell Checker NHunspell [1] (.NET Wrapper of the OpenOffice spell checker Hunspell [2]).

[1] http://nhunspell.sourceforge.net
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunspell

108
[0] [2009-04-28 13:42:01] kay.herzam

Charting

Winforms Controls

ASP.NET Controls

[1] http://zedgraph.org/
[2] http://www.nplot.com/
[3] http://sourceforge.net/projects/dockpanelsuite/
[4] http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Download/
[5] http://freetextbox.com/
[6] http://www.fckeditor.net/

109
[0] [2009-05-28 14:53:10] azheglov

NMock2 for unit-testing/mocking. NMock2 [1]

Lucene.NET: an open-source .NET port of a popular search engine API. Lucene.NET [2]

[1] http://www.nmock.org/
[2] http://incubator.apache.org/lucene.net/

110
[0] [2010-02-18 14:53:48] mohammedn

Zodiac.NET [1] is a good framework for building forms, surveys and questionnaires from XML.

[1] http://www.mentor-logic.com/index.php/products/components/zodiacnet

I don't see a free version for Zodiac.Net. The basic license is $450USD. - Brad Crandell
111
[0] [2009-12-03 23:53:32] anirudhgarg

I would also recommend the book

:Windows Developer Power Tools: Turbocharge Windows Development with More Than 140 Free and Open Source Tools (Paperback)

Not only does it list a lot of tools it also provides information on how to use them etc. in one place.

link text [1]

[1] http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596527543

112
[0] [2009-03-20 04:20:19] GiddyUpHorsey

Some that haven't been mentioned:

  • Gentle an ORM
  • Enterprise Library for validation, caching and logging
  • Json.NET [1] for Linq over Json
[1] http://www.codeplex.com/Json

Gentle.NET's a great O/RM (it's what we use), but AFAIK the author's no longer evolving it. - TrueWill
I too use Gentle.NET and even contributed a little bit to it, but Morten (its author) has stopped its development. - Martín Marconcini
113
[0] [2009-04-27 16:49:45] Matt Olenik

Fluent NHibernate [1] offers a statically compiled mapping alternative to NHibernate's XML mappings. Castle's ActiveRecord [2] is a great implementation of the active record mapping pattern.

[1] http://fluentnhibernate.org/
[2] http://www.castleproject.org/activerecord/index.html

114
[0] [2009-03-19 22:39:54] Chris

I've found that SharpZipLib is slow and doesn't compress nearly as good as winzip. I've used the C# version of 7-zip's LZMA algorithm is muuuch better.


115
[0] [2009-03-19 16:45:59] Gordon Bell

FlickrNet API Library [1]

[1] http://www.codeplex.com/FlickrNet

116
[0] [2009-03-19 16:39:09] abatishchev

NUnit [1]

SharpZipLib [2]

Log4Net [3]

[1] http://www.nunit.org/
[2] http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SharpZipLib/
[3] http://logging.apache.org/log4net/

Could you add links, please? - Jon B
117