Clean Architecture

What is Clean Architecture?

Clean Architecture is a design philosophy aimed at separating the concerns of software components to enhance maintainability, scalability, and understandability. The main goal is to decouple the business logic of an application from its external elements, such as frameworks and databases, allowing for more flexible and modular development. This approach leads to a system where the core business rules are isolated from external influences, making the code more reusable, testable, and adaptable to changes in technology or business requirements.

Benefits of Using Clean Architecture

Implementing Clean Architecture in your projects comes with multiple advantages:

• Flexibility: The separation of concerns facilitates easier changes in the software environment or business policies without affecting the core logic.

• Maintainability: Decoupled components are easier to manage, understand, and debug.

• Testability: Independent business logic allows for more straightforward unit testing since it's not entangled with external dependencies.

• Reusability: Core components can be reused across different projects or within different parts of the same project.

• Scalability: Clean architecture makes it easier to scale the application both in terms of functionality and team size.

Components of Clean Architecture

In the context of SoapJS, Clean Architecture is implemented through the following components:

• Entity: Represents the application's business data and rules. Entities are the most inner part of the architecture, which means they are independent of database models, external services, or any other external element.

• Model: These are data structures used to transfer data between layers (e.g., from a database to business logic). Models are typically derived from entities or transformed into entities.

• Mapper: A component responsible for converting data between entities and models. It usually contains two main methods: toEntity(), which maps data models to entities, and fromEntity(), which does the reverse.

• Source: This represents a specific implementation of a data client or provider, such as a database or an external service. It defines how data is fetched or stored.

• Repository: Acts as an intermediary between the domain layer and data mapping layers. It uses a Source to interact with data storage and returns data in the form of entities.

• RepositoryImpl: The concrete implementation of a repository, containing logic for working with data sources and mappers to deliver and manipulate data as entities or perform other operations.

• Service: Functions as a bridge to external services or data sources, unlike repositories which are tied to specific data collections. A Service can facilitate communication with third-party services or various data sources, providing an abstraction layer that allows the domain to interact with the outside world without direct dependency on external systems.

• Use Case: These are classes that contain specific business logic and operations. They should have an execute method and can access repositories and other components but should remain independent of other application layers.

• Controller: Serves as the entry point for business logic, receiving external data (e.g., from a web request), converting it to a format the application can use, and returning the output. Controllers should handle only minimal logic, delegating complex tasks to use cases.

• Route and RouteIO: In the context of web frameworks, these components handle the interaction between the framework and the application's controllers. They manage the conversion of incoming requests into the appropriate format for the controllers and then convert the controllers' output back into responses suitable for the outside world.

• Toolset is a special class designed to encapsulate various helper functions and utilities specific to a particular category, such as data manipulation or domain-specific operations. It should be clearly defined within a specific layer of your application, such as the 'data' or 'domain' layer, to maintain organization and ensure that related functionalities are grouped together. This approach helps in keeping the codebase clean, modular, and easier to navigate, while providing a centralized location for all utility methods related to a specific theme or function within the project.

These components work together to ensure that the application's core functionality remains isolated from external changes and frameworks, thereby adhering to the principles of Clean Architecture. This modular structure allows developers to build, test, and maintain each piece independently, improving the overall quality and durability of the software.