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

Designing API


We've looked at some guidelines and tips for drawing module boundaries and creating modules. How about the process of creating APIs? This might seem obvious, but the standard best practice of a separate public API and private implementation still applies here.

The goal when designing the module API is to expose a standard, consistent, and possibly unchanging programming interface as the public API of the module. The details of implementation that are internal to the module should be encapsulated. This is, in principle, no different from method and member variable encapsulation for classes. Design a public API for your modules that you want the consumers to work with. The implementation details are hidden in encapsulated packages and serve two purposes:

  • To reduce and simplify effort for the consumer so that they don't have to know the internals
  • To allow the module to change and evolve the implementation without having an impact on the consumers of the module