UserDTOs

UserDTO is a common term in software development, particularly in applications that handle user data. DTO stands for Data Transfer Object. A UserDTO is a specific type of DTO used to carry information about a user between different layers of an application or between different systems.

The primary purpose of a UserDTO is to decouple the data representation used in the presentation layer (like a web browser or mobile app) from the data representation used in the business logic or data access layers. This means that the structure of the UserDTO might not perfectly match the structure of the user object stored in a database. For instance, a UserDTO might exclude sensitive fields like password hashes, or it might combine data from multiple sources into a single object for easier consumption by the frontend.

Using UserDTOs helps improve application maintainability and flexibility. If the internal database schema for users changes, only the mapping between the database model and the UserDTO needs to be updated, without necessarily affecting the frontend code that uses the UserDTO. Similarly, if the requirements for the data displayed to the user change, the UserDTO can be modified without impacting the backend's data storage. It promotes a cleaner separation of concerns, making the codebase easier to understand and manage.