Book Image

Get Your Hands Dirty on Clean Architecture

By : Tom Hombergs
Book Image

Get Your Hands Dirty on Clean Architecture

By: Tom Hombergs

Overview of this book

Building for maintainability is key to keeping development costs low and processes easy. The second edition of Get Your Hands Dirty on Clean Architecture is here to equip you with the essential skills and knowledge to build maintainable software. With this comprehensive guide, you’ll explore the drawbacks of conventional layered architecture and the advantages of domain-centric styles such as Robert C. Martin's Clean Architecture and Alistair Cockburn's Hexagonal Architecture. Then, you’ll dive into hands-on explanations on how to convert hexagonal architecture into actual code. You'll learn in detail about different mapping strategies between the layers of hexagonal architecture and discover how to assemble the architectural elements into an application. Additionally, you’ll understand how to enforce architecture boundaries, which shortcuts produce what types of technical debt, and how, sometimes, it is a good idea to willingly take on those debts. By the end of this second edition, you'll be armed with a deep understanding of the hexagonal architecture style and be ready to create maintainable web applications that save money and time.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

How Does This Help Me Build Maintainable Software?

There are times when shortcuts make sense from an economic point of view. This chapter provided some insights into the consequences some shortcuts might have to help you decide whether to take them or not.

The discussion shows that it's tempting to introduce shortcuts for simple CRUD use cases, since for them, implementing the whole architecture feels like overkill (and the shortcuts don't feel like shortcuts). Since all applications start small, however, it's very important for the team to agree upon when a use case grows out of its CRUD state. Only then can the team replace the shortcuts with an architecture that is more maintainable in the long run.

Some use cases will never grow out of their CRUD state. For them, it might be more pragmatic to keep the shortcuts in place forever, as they don't really entail a maintenance overhead.

In any case, we should document the architecture and the decisions why we chose a certain...