the most common way to implement aggregates is to create a god class with enum status and "if-ladder", like below:
public class Order {
private OrderId id;
private PropertyA a;
private PropertyB b;
private OrderStatus status;
public void doSthWithA() {
if(status != OrderStatus.A) {
//throw illegal argument
}
//do sth with PropertyA
status = OrderStatus.B;
}
public void doSthWithB() {
if(status != OrderStatus.B) {
//throw illegal argument
}
//do sth with PropertyB
}
}
Order class isn not coherent, because doSthWithA uses PropertyA and doSthWithB uses PropertyB.
Isn't better way doing it in this way:
public class OrderA {
private OrderId id;
private PropertyA a;
public OrderB doSthWithA() {
//do sth with PropertyA
return new OrderB(id);
}
}
public class OrderB {
private OrderId id;
private PropertyB b;
public void doSthWithB() {
//do sth with PropertyB
}
}
?
Anyway I have a question. We could persist both aggregates in one table ORDER or two tables: ORDER_A and ORDER_B.
But what are strategies to test which order state is newest?
Let's assume that someone saves OrderA to DB, next executes doSthWithA and saves OrderB to DB.
Futher when we do some query how could we resolve the newest state? Should we add some version or timestamp to aggregates?
And what about REST services?
With one god class Order the REST services could look like:
/orders/{id}/do-sth-with-a and
/orders/{id}/do-sith-with-b
With second solution could we have:
/a-orders/{id}/do-sth-with-a and
/b-orders/{id}/do-sith-with-b
?
Isn't better way doing it in this way
Not necessarily better, because there are trade offs. However, it is common that the benefits of a design with smaller aggregates outweigh the costs.
Vaughn Vernon, in Implementing Domain Driven Design, proposes the rule "Design Small Aggregates".
Roughly, each aggregate "should" enclose coupled information; typically graphs of values that must be internally "consistent". If you find that your values form two discrete sets that have only a single identifier in common, that's a good sign that there is an opportunity to reduce the aggregate further.
We could persist both aggregates in one table ORDER or two tables: ORDER_A and ORDER_B. But what are strategies to test which order state is newest?
Real answer: if you actually care about "newest", then you should be modeling time in your domain logic.
It's not uncommon to throw general purpose timing information into a design, but you want to be careful about entangling general purpose timing used for operation and analysis from your domain timing.
And what about REST services?
Your resource model is not your domain model. Having a single "god" resource in your resource model has a completely different set of trade offs from "god" aggregates in your domain model.
It's completely normal to have one web resource that renders information from multiple aggregates.
Related
This was asked during an interview.
There are different manufacturers of buses. Each bus has got different models and each model has only 2 variants. So different manufacturers have different models with only 2 variants. The interviewer asked me to design a standalone program with just classes. She mentioned that I should not think about databases and I didn't have to code them. For example, it could be a console based program with inputs and outputs.
The manufacturers, models and variants information should be held in memory (hard-coded values were fine for this standalone program). She wanted to observe the classes and my problem solving approach.
She told me to focus on implementing three APIs or methods for this system.
The first one was to get information about a particular bus. Input would be manufacturer name, model name and variant name. Given these three values, the information about a particular bus such as its price, model, year, etc should be shown to the client.
The second API would be to compare two buses and the output would be to list the features side by side, probably in a tabular format. Input would be the same as the one for the first API i.e. manufacturer name, model name and variant name for both the buses.
The third one would be to search the buses by price (>= price) and get the list of buses which satisfy the condition.
She also added that the APIs should be scalable and I should design the solution with this condition on my mind.
This is how I designed the classes:
class Manufacturer {
private String name;
private Set<Model> models;
// some more properties related to manufacturer
}
class Model {
private String name;
private Integer year;
private Set<Variant> variants;
// some more properties related to model
}
class Variant {
private String name;
private BigDecimal price;
// some more properties related to variant
}
class Bus {
private String manufacturerName;
private String modelName;
private String variantName;
private Integer year;
private BigDecimal price;
// some more additional properties as required by client
}
class BusService {
// The first method
public Bus getBusInformation(String manufacturerName, String modelName, String variantName) throws Exception {
Manufacturer manufacturer = findManufacturer(manufacturerName);
//if(manufacturer == null) throw a valid exception
Model model = findModel(manufacturer);
// if(model == null) throw a valid exception
Variant variant = findVariant(model);
// if(variant == null) throw a valid exception
return createBusInformation(manufacturer, model, variant);
}
}
She stressed that there were only 2 variants and there wouldn't be any more variants and it should be scalable. After going through the classes, she said she understood my approach and I didn't have to implement the other APIs/methods. I realized that she wasn't impressed with the way I designed them.
It would be helpful to understand the mistake I made so that I could learn from it.
I interpreted your 3 requirements a bit differently (and I may be wrong). But it sounds like the overall desire is to be able to perform different searches against all Models, correct?
Also, sounds to me that as all Variants are Models. I suspect different variants would have different options, but nothing to confirm that. If so, a variant is just a subclass of a particular model. However, if variants end up having the same set of properties, then variant isn't anything more than an additional descriptor to the model.
Anyway, going on my suspicions, I'd have made Model the center focus, and gone with:
(base class)
abstract class Model {
private Manufacturer manufacturer;
private String name;
private String variant;
private Integer year;
private BigDecimal price;
// some more properties related to model
}
(manufacturer variants)
abstract class AlphaModel {
AlphaModel() {
this.manufacturer = new Manufacturer() { name = "Alpha" }
}
// some more properties related to this manufacturer
}
abstract class BetaModel {
BetaModel() {
this.manufacturer = new Manufacturer() { name = "Beta" }
}
// some more properties related to this manufacturer
}
(model variants)
abstract class AlphaBus : AlphaModel {
AlphaBus() {
this.name = "Super Bus";
}
// some more properties related to this model
}
abstract class BetaTruck : BetaModel {
BetaTruck() {
this.name = "Big Truck";
}
// some more properties related to this model
}
(actual instances)
class AlphaBusX : AlphaBus {
AlphaBusX() {
this.variant = "X Edition";
}
// some more properties exclusive to this variant
}
class AlphaBusY : AlphaBus {
AlphaBusY() {
this.variant = "Y Edition";
}
// some more properties exclusive to this variant
}
class BetaTruckF1 : BetaTruck {
BetaTruckF1() {
this.variant = "Model F1";
}
// some more properties exclusive to this variant
}
class BetaTruckF2 : BetaTruck {
BetaTruckF2() {
this.variant = "Model F2";
}
// some more properties exclusive to this variant
}
Then finally:
var data = new Set<Model> {
new AlphaBusX(),
new AlphaBusY(),
new BetaTruckF1(),
new BetaTruckF2()
}
API #1:
var result = data.First(x => x.manufacturer.name = <manufactuer>
&& x.name = <model>
&& x.variant = <variant>);
API #2:
var result1 = API#1(<manufacturer1>, <model1>, <variant1>);
var result2 = API#1(<manufacturer2>, <model2>, <variant2>);
API #3:
var result = data.Where(x => x.price >= <price>);
I would say your representation of the Bus class is severely limited, Variant, Model, Manufacturer should be hard links to the classes and not strings. Then a get for the name of each.
E.G from the perspective of Bus bus1 this.variant.GetName() or from the outside world. bus1.GetVariant().name
By limiting your bus to strings of it's held pieces, you're forced to do a lookup even when inside the bus class, which performs much slower at scale than a simple memory reference.
In terms of your API (while I don't have an example), your one way to get bus info is limited. If the makeup of the bus changes (variant changes, new component classes are introduced), it requires a decent rewrite of that function, and if other functions are written similarly then all of those two.
It would require some thought but a generic approach to this that can dynamically grab the info based on the input makes it easier to add/remove component pieces later on. This will be the are your interviewer was focusing on most in terms of advanced technical&language skills. Implementing generics, delegates, etc. here in the right way can make future upkeep of your API a lot easier. (Sorry I don't have an example)
I wouldn't say your approach here is necessarily bad though, the string member variables are probably the only major issue.
I am exploring Entity Framework 7 and I would like to know if there is a way to intercept a "SELECT" query. Every time an entity is created, updated or deleted I stamp the entity with the current date and time.
SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE DeletedOn IS NOT NULL
I would like all my SELECT queries to exclude deleted data (see WHERE clause above). Is there a way to do that using Entity Framework 7?
I am not sure what your underlying infrastructure looks like and if you have any abstraction between your application and Entity Framework. Let's assume you are working with DbSet<T> you could write an extension method to exclude data that has been deleted.
public class BaseEntity
{
public DateTime? DeletedOn { get; set; }
}
public static class EfExtensions
{
public static IQueryable<T> ExcludeDeleted<T>(this IDbSet<T> dbSet)
where T : BaseEntity
{
return dbSet.Where(e => e.DeletedOn == null);
}
}
//Usage
context.Set<BaseEntity>().ExcludeDeleted().Where(...additional where clause).
I have somewhat same issue. I'm trying to intercept read queries like; select, where etc in order to look into the returned result set. In EF Core you don't have an equivalent to override SaveChanges for read queries, unfortunately.
You can however, still i Entity Framework Core, hook into commandExecuting and commandExecuted, by using
var listener = _context.GetService<DiagnosticSource>();
(listener as DiagnosticListener).SubscribeWithAdapter(new CommandListener());
and creating a class with following two methods
public class CommandListener
{
[DiagnosticName("Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Database.Command.CommandExecuting")]
public void OnCommandExecuting(DbCommand command, DbCommandMethod executeMethod, Guid commandId, Guid connectionId, bool async, DateTimeOffset startTime)
{
//do stuff.
}
[DiagnosticName("Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Database.Command.CommandExecuted")]
public void OnCommandExecuted(object result, bool async)
{
//do stuff.
}
}
However these are high lewel interceptors and hence you won't be able to view the returned result set (making it useless in your case).
I recommend two things, first go to and cast a vote on the implementation of "Hooks to intercept and modify queries on the fly at high and low level" at: https://data.uservoice.com/forums/72025-entity-framework-core-feature-suggestions/suggestions/1051569-hooks-to-intercept-and-modify-queries-on-the-fly-a
Second you can use PostSharp (a commercial product) by using interceptors like; LocationInterceptionAspect on properties or OnMethodBoundaryAspect for methods.
I have a simple hierarchy
public abstract class CommunicationSupport
{
public SupportTypeEnum Type { get; set; }
public Country Origin { get; set; } // National or Foreign support
}
public class TelecomSupport : CommunicationSupport
{
public string Number { get; set; }
}
public class PostalSupport : CommunicationSupport
{
public Address Address { get; set; }
}
I plan to use the Table-per-type hierarchy for my DB. So 3 tables will be created, one base and two child using the same PK as the base.
My problem is that I want to be able to update a CommunicationSupport by changing it's type.
Let's say that I create a TelecomSupport, save it and then change it's type to a PostalSupport and save it again (update). The result I expect is for EF to keep the same base record (CommunicationSupport Id) but delete the record in the TelecomSupport table and create a new one in the PostalSupport.
So TelecomSupport and PostalSupport are exclusive and cannot share the same base CommunicationSupport.
How can I do that using EntityFramework 5?
Thanks for your help!
I don't have a good answer, but I can think of four "solutions" that are really workarounds:
Don't use DBMS-computed values for your primary keys (if you already use natural keys, it's fine).
Use DBMS-computed surrogate keys.
Follow something like the state pattern.
Do some evil voodoo with the object state manager.
Update: There seems to be a popular consensus that trying isn't even worth it; most people thus simply use stored procedures instead to work around the problem.
Changing Inherited Types in Entity Framework
Entity Framework: Inheritance, change object type
Changing the type of an (Entity Framework) entity that is part of an inheritance hierarchy
Changing the type of an entity that is part of an inheritance hierarchy
Using natural keys
First, remember that the objects tracked by the EF are part of your DAL, not your domain model (regardless of whether you use POCOs or not). Some people don't need a domain model, but keep it in mind, as we can now think of these objects as representations of table records we manipulate in ways we wouldn't with domain objects.
Here, we use IDbSet.Remove to delete the records of the entity, then add new ones with the same primary key using IDbSet.Add, all in a single transaction. See the ChangeType method in the sample code below.
In theory, integrity is OK, and in theory, EF could detect what you're trying to do and optimize things. In practice, it currently doesn't (I profiled the SQL interface to verify this). The result is that it looks ugly (DELETE+INSERT instead of UPDATE), so if system beauty and performance are issues, it's probably a no-go. If you can take it, it's relatively straightforward.
Here is some sample code I used to test this (if you want to experiment, simply create a new console application, add a reference to the EntityFramework assembly, and paste the code).
A is the base class, X and Y are subclasses. We consider Id to be a natural key, so we can copy it in the subclasses copy constructors (here only implemented for Y). The code creates a database and seeds it with a record of type X. Then, it runs and changes its type to Y, obviously losing X-specific data in the process. The copy constructor is where you would transform data, or archive it if data loss is not part of the business process. The only piece of "interesting" code is the ChangeType method, the rest is boilerplate.
using System;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema;
using System.Data.Entity;
using System.Linq;
namespace EntitySubTypeChange {
abstract class A {
[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None)]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Foo { get; set; }
public override string ToString() {
return string.Format("Type:\t{0}{3}Id:\t{1}{3}Foo:\t{2}{3}",
this.GetType(), Id, Foo, Environment.NewLine);
}
}
[Table("X")]
class X : A {
public string Bar { get; set; }
public override string ToString() {
return string.Format("{0}Bar:\t{1}{2}", base.ToString(), Bar, Environment.NewLine);
}
}
[Table("Y")]
class Y : A {
public Y() {}
public Y(A a) {
this.Id = a.Id;
this.Foo = a.Foo;
}
public string Baz { get; set; }
public override string ToString() {
return string.Format("{0}Baz:\t{1}{2}", base.ToString(), Baz, Environment.NewLine);
}
}
class Program {
static void Main(string[] args) {
Display();
ChangeType();
Display();
}
static void Display() {
using (var context = new Container())
Console.WriteLine(context.A.First());
Console.ReadKey();
}
static void ChangeType()
{
using (var context = new Container()) {
context.A.Add(new Y(context.A.Remove(context.X.First())));
context.SaveChanges();
}
}
class Container : DbContext {
public IDbSet<A> A { get; set; }
public IDbSet<X> X { get; set; }
public IDbSet<Y> Y { get; set; }
}
static Program() {
Database.SetInitializer<Container>(new ContainerInitializer());
}
class ContainerInitializer : DropCreateDatabaseAlways<Container> {
protected override void Seed(Container context) {
context.A.Add(new X { Foo = "Base Value", Bar = "SubType X Value" });
context.SaveChanges();
}
}
}
}
Output:
Type: EntitySubTypeChange.X
Id: 0
Foo: Base Value
Bar: SubType X Value
Type: EntitySubTypeChange.Y
Id: 0
Foo: Base Value
Baz:
Note: If you want an auto-generated natural key, you can't let EF ask the DBMS to compute it, or EF will prevent you from manipulating it the way you want (see below). In effect, EF treats all keys with computed values as surrogate keys, even though it still happily leaks them (the bad of both worlds).
Note: I annotate the subclasses with Table because you mentioned a TPT setup, but the problem is not actually related to TPT.
Using surrogate keys
If you consider a surrogate key to be truly internal, then it doesn't matter if it changes under your nose as long as you can still access your data the same way (using a secondary index for example).
Note: In practice, many people leak surrogate keys all around (domain model, service interface, ...). Don't do it.
If you take the previous sample, simply remove the DatabaseGenerated attribute and the assignment of the Id in the copy constructor of the subtypes.
Note: With its value generated by the DBMS, the Id property is completely ignored by EF and doesn't serve any real purpose other than being analyzed by the model builder to generate the Id column in the SQL schema. That and being leaked by bad programmers.
Output:
Type: EntitySubTypeChange.X
Id: 1
Foo: Base Value
Bar: SubType X Value
Type: EntitySubTypeChange.Y
Id: 2
Foo: Base Value
Baz:
Using the state pattern (or similar)
This solution is probably what most people would consider the "proper solution", since you can't change the intrinsic type of an object in most object-oriented languages. This is the case for CTS-compliant languages, which includes C#.
The problem is that this pattern is properly used in a domain model, not in a DAL like one implemented with EF. I'm not saying it's impossible, you may be able to hack things up with complex types or TPH constructs to avoid the creation of an intermediary table, but most likely you'll be swimming up the river until you give up. Hopefully someone can prove me wrong though.
Note: You can decide that you want your relational model to look different, in which case you may bypass this problem altogether. It wouldn't be an answer to your question though.
Using internal EF voodoo
I've rather quickly looked around the reference documentation for DbContext, ObjectContext and ObjectStateManager, and I can't immediately find any way to change the type of an entity. If you have better luck than me, you may be able to use DTOs and DbPropertyValues to do your conversion.
Important note
With the first two workarounds, you'll likely hit a bunch of problems with navigational properties and foreign keys (because of the DELETE+INSERT operation). This would be a separate question.
Conclusion
EF is not that flexible when you do anything non-trivial, but it keeps improving. Hopefully this answer won't be relevant in the future. It's also possible that I'm not aware of an existing killer-feature that would make what you want possible, so don't make any decisions based on this answer.
I am designing a system that has a simple Entity Framework backed domain object that has fields I need to update based on a series of rules - I want to implement these rules progressively (in an agile style) and as I am using EF I am sceptical about putting each rule into the domain object. However, I want to avoid writing "procedural code" and using anemic domain models. This all needs to be testable as well.
As an example, the object is:
class Employee {
private string Name;
private float Salary;
private float PensionPot;
private bool _pension;
private bool _eligibleForPension;
}
I need to build rules such as "if Salary is higher than 100,000 and _eligibleForPension is false then set _eligibleForPension as true" and "if _pension is true then set _eligibleForPension as true".
There are approximately 20 such rules and I am looking for advice whether they should be implemented in the Employee class or in something like an EmployeeRules class? My first thought was to create a separate class for each rule inheriting from "Rule" and then apply each rule to the Employee class, maybe using the Visitor pattern but I'd have to expose all the fields to the rules to do this so it feels wrong. Having each rule on the Employee class though doesn't feel quite right either. How would this be implemented?
The second concern is that the actual Employees are Entity Framework entities backed to the DB so I don't feel happy adding logic to these "Entities" - especially when I need to mock the objects for unit testing each rule. How could I mock them if they have the rules I'm testing on the same object?
I have been thinking of using AutoMapper to convert to a simpler domain object before applying rules but then need to manage the updates to the fields myself. Any advice on this too?
One approach is to make the rules inner classes of Employee. The benefit of this approach is that the fields can remain private. Also, the invocation of the rules can be enforced by the Employee class itself, ensuring that they are always invoked when needed:
class Employee
{
string id;
string name;
float salary;
float pensionPot;
bool pension;
bool eligibleForPension;
public void ChangeSalary(float salary)
{
this.salary = salary;
ApplyRules();
}
public void MakeEligibleForPension()
{
this.eligibleForPension = true;
ApplyRules(); // may or may not be needed
}
void ApplyRules()
{
rules.ForEach(rule => rule.Apply(this));
}
readonly static List<IEmployeeRule> rules;
static Employee()
{
rules = new List<IEmployeeRule>
{
new SalaryBasedPensionEligibilityRule()
};
}
interface IEmployeeRule
{
void Apply(Employee employee);
}
class SalaryBasedPensionEligibilityRule : IEmployeeRule
{
public void Apply(Employee employee)
{
if (employee.salary > 100000 && !employee.eligibleForPension)
{
employee.MakeEligibleForPension();
}
}
}
}
One problem here is that the Employee class has to contain all rule implementations. This isn't a major problem since the rules embody business logic associated with employee pensions and so they do belong together.
Business rules are usually an interesting topic. There may certainly be a difference between an aggregate / entity invariant and a business rule. Business rules may need external data and I wouldn't agree with a rule changing an aggregate / entity.
You should think specification pattern for rules. The rule should basically just return whether it was broken or not with possibly a description of sorts.
In your example SalaryBasedPensionEligibilityRule, as used by eulerfx, may need some PensionThreshold. This rule really does look more like a task since the rule really isn't checking any validity of the entity.
So I would suggest that rules are a decision mechanism and tasks are for changing the state.
That being said you probably want to ask the entity for advice here since you may not want to expose the state:
public class Employee
{
float salary;
bool eligibleForPension;
public bool QualifiesForPension(float pensionThreshold)
{
return salary > pensionThreshold && !eligibleForPension;
}
public void MakeEligibleForPension()
{
eligibleForPension = true;
}
}
This sticks with the command/query separation idea.
If you are building directly from your ORM objects and do not want to, or cannot, include all the behaviour then that is OK --- but it certainly would help :)
Does anyone know the best way to refactor a God-object?
Its not as simple as breaking it into a number of smaller classes, because there is a high method coupling. If I pull out one method, i usually end up pulling every other method out.
It's like Jenga. You will need patience and a steady hand, otherwise you have to recreate everything from scratch. Which is not bad, per se - sometimes one needs to throw away code.
Other advice:
Think before pulling out methods: on what data does this method operate? What responsibility does it have?
Try to maintain the interface of the god class at first and delegate calls to the new extracted classes. In the end the god class should be a pure facade without own logic. Then you can keep it for convenience or throw it away and start to use the new classes only
Unit Tests help: write tests for each method before extracting it to assure you don't break functionality
I assume "God Object" means a huge class (measured in lines of code).
The basic idea is to extract parts of its functions into other classes.
In order to find those you can look for
fields/parameters that often get used together. They might move together into a new class
methods (or parts of methods) that use only a small subset of the fields in the class, the might move into a class containing just those field.
primitive types (int, String, boolean). They often are really value objects before their coming out. Once they are value object, they often attract methods.
look at the usage of the god object. Are there different methods used by different clients? Those might go in separate interfaces. Those intefaces might in turn have separate implementations.
For actually doing these changes you should have some infrastructure and tools at your command:
Tests: Have a (possibly generated) exhaustive set of tests ready that you can run often. Be extremely careful with changes you do without tests. I do those, but limit them to things like extract method, which I can do completely with a single IDE action.
Version Control: You want to have a version control that allows you to commit every 2 minutes, without really slowing you down. SVN doesn't really work. Git does.
Mikado Method: The idea of the Mikado Method is to try a change. If it works great. If not take note what is breaking, add them as dependency to the change you started with. Rollback you changes. In the resulting graph, repeat the process with a node that has no dependencies yet. http://mikadomethod.wordpress.com/book/
According to the book "Object Oriented Metrics in Practice" by Lanza and Marinescu, The God Class design flaw refers to classes that tend to centralize the intelligence of the system. A God Class performs too much work on its own, delegating only minor details to a set of trivial classes and using the data from other classes.
The detection of a God Class is based on three main characteristics:
They heavily access data of other simpler classes, either directly or using accessor methods.
They are large and complex
They have a lot of non-communicative behavior i.e., there is a low
cohesion between the methods belonging to that class.
Refactoring a God Class is a complex task, as this disharmony is often a cumulative effect of other disharmonies that occur at the method level. Therefore, performing such a refactoring requires additional and more fine-grained information about the methods of the class, and sometimes even about its inheritance context. A first approach is to identify clusters of methods and attributes that are tied together and to extract these islands into separate classes.
Split Up God Class method from the book "Object-Oriented Reengineering Patterns" proposes to incrementally redistribute the responsibilities of the God Class either to its collaborating classes or to new classes that are pulled out of the God Class.
The book "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" presents some techniques such as Sprout Method, Sprout Class, Wrap Method to be able to test the legacy systems that can be used to support the refactoring of God Classes.
What I would do, is to sub-group methods in the God Class which utilize the same class properties as inputs or outputs. After that, I would split the class into sub-classes, where each sub-class will hold the methods in a sub-group, and the properties which these methods utilize.
That way, each new class will be smaller and more coherent (meaning that all their methods will work on similar class properties). Moreover, there will be less dependency for each new class we generated. After that, we can further reduce those dependencies since we can now understand the code better.
In general, I would say that there are a couple of different methods according to the situation at hand. As an example, let's say that you have a god class named "LoginManager" that validates user information, updates "OnlineUserService" so the user is added to the online user list, and returns login-specific data (such as Welcome screen and one time offers)to the client.
So your class will look something like this:
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class LoginManager {
public void handleLogin(String hashedUserId, String hashedUserPassword){
String userId = decryptHashedString(hashedUserId);
String userPassword = decryptHashedString(hashedUserPassword);
if(!validateUser(userId, userPassword)){ return; }
updateOnlineUserService(userId);
sendCustomizedLoginMessage(userId);
sendOneTimeOffer(userId);
}
public String decryptHashedString(String hashedString){
String userId = "";
//TODO Decrypt hashed string for 150 lines of code...
return userId;
}
public boolean validateUser(String userId, String userPassword){
//validate for 100 lines of code...
List<String> userIdList = getUserIdList();
if(!isUserIdValid(userId,userIdList)){return false;}
if(!isPasswordCorrect(userId,userPassword)){return false;}
return true;
}
private List<String> getUserIdList() {
List<String> userIdList = new ArrayList<>();
//TODO: Add implementation details
return userIdList;
}
private boolean isPasswordCorrect(String userId, String userPassword) {
boolean isValidated = false;
//TODO: Add implementation details
return isValidated;
}
private boolean isUserIdValid(String userId, List<String> userIdList) {
boolean isValidated = false;
//TODO: Add implementation details
return isValidated;
}
public void updateOnlineUserService(String userId){
//TODO updateOnlineUserService for 100 lines of code...
}
public void sendCustomizedLoginMessage(String userId){
//TODO sendCustomizedLoginMessage for 50 lines of code...
}
public void sendOneTimeOffer(String userId){
//TODO sendOneTimeOffer for 100 lines of code...
}}
Now we can see that this class will be huge and complex. It is not a God class by book definition yet, since class fields are commonly used among methods now. But for the sake of argument, we can treat it as a God class and start refactoring.
One of the solutions is to create separate small classes which are used as members in the main class. Another thing you could add, could be separating different behaviors in different interfaces and their respective classes. Hide implementation details in classes by making those methods "private". And use those interfaces in the main class to do its bidding.
So at the end, RefactoredLoginManager will look like this:
public class RefactoredLoginManager {
IDecryptHandler decryptHandler;
IValidateHandler validateHandler;
IOnlineUserServiceNotifier onlineUserServiceNotifier;
IClientDataSender clientDataSender;
public void handleLogin(String hashedUserId, String hashedUserPassword){
String userId = decryptHandler.decryptHashedString(hashedUserId);
String userPassword = decryptHandler.decryptHashedString(hashedUserPassword);
if(!validateHandler.validateUser(userId, userPassword)){ return; }
onlineUserServiceNotifier.updateOnlineUserService(userId);
clientDataSender.sendCustomizedLoginMessage(userId);
clientDataSender.sendOneTimeOffer(userId);
}
}
DecryptHandler:
public class DecryptHandler implements IDecryptHandler {
public String decryptHashedString(String hashedString){
String userId = "";
//TODO Decrypt hashed string for 150 lines of code...
return userId;
}
}
public interface IDecryptHandler {
String decryptHashedString(String hashedString);
}
ValidateHandler:
public class ValidateHandler implements IValidateHandler {
public boolean validateUser(String userId, String userPassword){
//validate for 100 lines of code...
List<String> userIdList = getUserIdList();
if(!isUserIdValid(userId,userIdList)){return false;}
if(!isPasswordCorrect(userId,userPassword)){return false;}
return true;
}
private List<String> getUserIdList() {
List<String> userIdList = new ArrayList<>();
//TODO: Add implementation details
return userIdList;
}
private boolean isPasswordCorrect(String userId, String userPassword)
{
boolean isValidated = false;
//TODO: Add implementation details
return isValidated;
}
private boolean isUserIdValid(String userId, List<String> userIdList)
{
boolean isValidated = false;
//TODO: Add implementation details
return isValidated;
}
}
Important thing to note here is that the interfaces () only has to include the methods used by other classes. So IValidateHandler looks as simple as this:
public interface IValidateHandler {
boolean validateUser(String userId, String userPassword);
}
OnlineUserServiceNotifier:
public class OnlineUserServiceNotifier implements
IOnlineUserServiceNotifier {
public void updateOnlineUserService(String userId){
//TODO updateOnlineUserService for 100 lines of code...
}
}
public interface IOnlineUserServiceNotifier {
void updateOnlineUserService(String userId);
}
ClientDataSender:
public class ClientDataSender implements IClientDataSender {
public void sendCustomizedLoginMessage(String userId){
//TODO sendCustomizedLoginMessage for 50 lines of code...
}
public void sendOneTimeOffer(String userId){
//TODO sendOneTimeOffer for 100 lines of code...
}
}
Since both methods are accessed in LoginHandler, interface has to include both methods:
public interface IClientDataSender {
void sendCustomizedLoginMessage(String userId);
void sendOneTimeOffer(String userId);
}
There are really two topics here:
Given a God class, how its members be rationally partitioned into subsets? The fundamental idea is to group elements by conceptual coherency (often indicated by frequent co-usage in client modules) and by forced dependencies. Obviously the details of this are specific to the system being refactored. The outcome is a desired partition (set of groups) of God class elements.
Given a desired partition, actually making the change. This is difficult if the code base has any scale. Doing this manually, you are almost forced to retain the God class while you modify its accessors to instead call new classes formed from the partitions. And of course you need to test, test, test because it is easy to make a mistake when manually making these changes. When all accesses to the God class are gone, you can finally remove it. This sounds great in theory but it takes a long time in practice if you are facing thousands of compilation units, and you have to get the team members to stop adding accesses to the God interface while you do this. One can, however, apply automated refactoring tools to implement this; with such a tool you specify the partition to the tool and it then modifies the code base in a reliable way. Our DMS can implement this Refactoring C++ God Classes and has been used to make such changes across systems with 3,000 compilation units.