what is a dto

A DTO, or Data Transfer Object, is an object used in programming to carry data between processes. The motivation for using DTOs is that communication between processes is usually done through remote interfaces, where each call is expensive. DTOs are simple objects that should not contain any business logic but may contain serialization and deserialization mechanisms for transferring data over the wire. They are used to transfer parameters to methods and as return types. DTOs are easy to develop and update, and they are commonly used in object-oriented programming languages such as Python, C++, and Java. A DTO is a dumb object that just holds properties and has getters and setters, but no other logic of any significance. The difference between DTOs and business objects or data access objects is that a DTO does not have any behavior except for storage, retrieval, serialization, and deserialization of its own data.