Services Classes

Using service classes in software development can help with on readability, maintainability, scalability, and testability.

Here are some of the key points to remembers:

1. Introduction
   - Motivation for using service classes to encapsulate business logic.
   - Disclaimer about language independence and simplicity of examples.

2. Service Pattern Clarification
   - Definition and purpose of a service class in the context of encapsulating business logic.
   - Distinction from other architectural patterns and focus on readability and maintainability over framework abstraction.

3. Core Best Practices
   - Public “process” method: Implementing a single entry-point to enhance clarity and accessibility for new developers and non-technical domain experts.
   - Mark internal methods as “protected”: Improving code interaction and readability by clearly indicating non-public methods.
   - Keep the context outside: Ensuring testability and framework independence by minimizing dependencies on external contexts, such as web requests.

4. Structural Guidelines
   - Pass required parameters via the constructor: Streamlining service usage and enhancing clarity by avoiding clutter in the process method.
   - Limit write access to class attributes: Maintaining simplicity and reducing unintended side-effects by restricting where class attributes can be modified.
   - Avoid class attributes if possible: Encouraging local scope over global to simplify data flow and debugging.
   - Try to avoid optional parameters and flags: Simplifying logic and reducing complexity by minimizing branching and potential outcomes.

5. Coding Practices for Clarity and Maintainability
   - Limit your services depth: Avoiding deep nesting of method calls to keep the logic straightforward and understandable.
   - Use docstrings and inline comments: Providing context and explanations to help future developers understand the purpose and implementation details.
   - Explain obscure or innovative implementations: Documenting the rationale behind non-obvious code choices to facilitate future maintenance and refactoring.

6. Advanced Structuring Techniques
   - Use mixins for inheritance: Leveraging mixins to avoid code duplication and enhance reusability without the overhead of full inheritance.
   - Keep your methods short: Striving for concise methods to improve readability and manageability.

7. Coding Enhancements
   - Use type-hinting: Increasing code clarity and aiding debugging by specifying expected data types.
   - DRY is about knowledge, not code: Distinguishing between code reuse and the encapsulation of business knowledge to avoid semantic dilution.

8. Alternative Strategies
   - Finite state machines (FSM) as a pattern for implementing business flows
   - BPM / BPMN

Page last modified: 2024-02-13 10:02:46