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:
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Introduction
- Motivation for using service classes to encapsulate business logic.
- Disclaimer about language independence and simplicity of examples. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
Alternative Strategies
- Finite state machines (FSM) as a pattern for implementing business flows
- BPM / BPMN
Page last modified: 2024-09-25 08:35:47