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)

Hexagonal Architecture

The term "hexagonal architecture" stems from Alistair Cockburn and has been around for quite some time (The primary source for the term "Hexagonal Architecture" is Alistair Cockburn's blog post at https://alistair.cockburn.us/hexagonal-architecture/). It applies the same principles that Robert C. Martin later described in more general terms in his clean architecture:

Figure 2.4: A hexagonal architecture is also called a "ports-and-adapters" architecture since the application core provides specific ports for each adapter to interact with

The preceding figure shows what a hexagonal architecture might look like. The application core is represented as a hexagon, giving this architecture style its name. The hexagon shape has no meaning, however, so we might just as well draw an octagon and call it "octagonal architecture." According to legend, the hexagon was simply used instead of the common rectangle to show...