Gain insight into how hexagonal architecture can help to keep the cost of development low over the complete lifetime of an application

Key Features

• Explore ways to make your software flexible, extensible, and adaptable
• Learn new concepts that you can easily blend with your own software development style
• Develop the mindset of building maintainable solutions instead of taking shortcuts

Book Description

We would all like to build software architecture that yields adaptable and flexible software with low development costs. But, unreasonable deadlines and shortcuts make it very hard to create such an architecture.

Get Your Hands Dirty on Clean Architecture starts with a discussion about the conventional layered architecture style and its disadvantages. It also talks about the advantages of the domain-centric architecture styles of Robert C. Martin's Clean Architecture and Alistair Cockburn's Hexagonal Architecture. Then, the book dives into hands-on chapters that show you how to manifest a hexagonal architecture in actual code. You'll learn in detail about different mapping strategies between the layers of a hexagonal architecture and see how to assemble the architecture elements into an application. The later chapters demonstrate how to enforce architecture boundaries. You'll also learn what shortcuts produce what types of technical debt and how, sometimes, it is a good idea to willingly take on those debts.

After reading this book, you'll have all the knowledge you need to create applications using the hexagonal architecture style of web development.

What you will learn

• Identify potential shortcomings of using a layered architecture
• Apply methods to enforce architecture boundaries
• Find out how potential shortcuts can affect the software architecture
• Produce arguments for when to use which style of architecture
• Structure your code according to the architecture
• Apply various types of tests that will cover each element of the architecture

Who this book is for

This book is for you if you care about the architecture of the software you are building. To get the most out of this book, you must have some experience with web development. The code examples in this book are in Java. If you are not a Java programmer but can read object-oriented code in other languages, you will be fine. In the few places where Java or framework specifics are needed, they are thoroughly explained.

Table of Contents

1. What’s Wrong With Layers?
2. Inverting Dependencies
3. Organizing Code
4. Implementing a Use Case
5. Implementing a Web Adapter
6. Implementing a Persistence Adapter
7. Testing Architecture Elements
8. Mapping Between Boundaries
9. Assembling the Application
10. Enforcing Architecture Boundaries
11. Taking Shortcuts Consciously
12. Deciding on an Architecture Style

About the Author

Tom Hombergs is a software engineer by profession and by passion with more than a decade of experience working on many different software projects for many different clients across various industries. In software projects, he takes on the roles of software developer, architect, and coach, with a focus on the Java ecosystem. He has found that writing is the best way to learn, so he likes to dive deep into topics he encounters in his software projects to create texts that give structure to the chaotic world of software development. He regularly writes about software development on his blog and is an occasional speaker at conferences.