Book Image

Modular Programming in Java 9

By : Koushik Srinivas Kothagal
Book Image

Modular Programming in Java 9

By: Koushik Srinivas Kothagal

Overview of this book

The Java 9 module system is an important addition to the language that affects the way we design, write, and organize code and libraries in Java. It provides a new way to achieve maintainable code by the encapsulation of Java types, as well as a way to write better libraries that have clear interfaces. Effectively using the module system requires an understanding of how modules work and what the best practices of creating modules are. This book will give you step-by-step instructions to create new modules as well as migrate code from earlier versions of Java to the Java 9 module system. You'll be working on a fully modular sample application and add features to it as you learn about Java modules. You'll learn how to create module definitions, setup inter-module dependencies, and use the built-in modules from the modular JDK. You will also learn about module resolution and how to use jlink to generate custom runtime images. We will end our journey by taking a look at the road ahead. You will learn some powerful best practices that will help you as you start building modular applications. You will also learn how to upgrade an existing Java 8 codebase to Java 9, handle issues with libraries, and how to test Java 9 applications.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Configuring module dependency


Think of a module being a walled garden by default. By default, any Java type in a module is accessible only to the types inside the same module. Previously, the SortUtil class was in the packt.addressbook module and was thus accessible to other types in that module. Move it to a different module however, and it is not accessible to types in the original module anymore.

Given two modules, A and B, for any type in module A to access a type in module B, two conditions need to be satisfied:

  • Module A needs to declare its dependency on module B
  • Module B needs to declare that it's okay with that type being accessed externally by other modules

If either of these conditions isn't met, the type being accessed in module B is said to be not readable by module A. We'll cover the topics of readability and accessibility in sufficient detail in Chapter 6, Module Resolution, Accessibility, and Readability, but, for now, note that these are two important requirements. Let's apply...