Book Image

Designing Hexagonal Architecture with Java

By : Davi Vieira
Book Image

Designing Hexagonal Architecture with Java

By: Davi Vieira

Overview of this book

Hexagonal architecture enhances developers' productivity by decoupling business code from technology code, making the software more change-tolerant, and allowing it to evolve and incorporate new technologies without the need for significant refactoring. By adhering to hexagonal principles, you can structure your software in a way that reduces the effort required to understand and maintain the code. This book starts with an in-depth analysis of hexagonal architecture's building blocks, such as entities, use cases, ports, and adapters. You'll learn how to assemble business code in the Domain hexagon, create features by using ports and use cases in the Application hexagon, and make your software compatible with different technologies by employing adapters in the Framework hexagon. Moving on, you'll get your hands dirty developing a system based on a real-world scenario applying all the hexagonal architecture's building blocks. By creating a hexagonal system, you'll also understand how you can use Java modules to reinforce dependency inversion and ensure the isolation of each hexagon in the architecture. Finally, you'll get to grips with using Quarkus to turn your hexagonal application into a cloud-native system. By the end of this hexagonal architecture book, you'll be able to bring order and sanity to the development of complex and long-lasting applications.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1: Architecture Fundamentals
7
Section 2: Using Hexagons to Create a Solid Foundation
12
Section 3: Becoming Cloud-Native

Understanding adapters

In hexagonal architecture, adapters have a different role than the adapters described in Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides. In the Gang of Four (GoF) design patterns, we use adapters to make the interfaces of two diverging classes compatible with each other. In the hexagonal architecture, we use adapters to allow a system to be compatible with different technologies or protocols. Although the adapter's role in those two approaches may differ, it would be correct to state that both approaches share the same purpose, that is, to adapt something to fit correctly into another thing.

A practical analogy to understand the role adapters play in hexagonal architecture is about remote connections to a computer. Every modern operating system is compatible with remote connection protocols. In the past and even today, in certain situations, it was common to use Telnet to...