Anti-corruption Layer for mapping between Boundaries

[@Boss-gr4jw]

We depend a lot on external services and always build ACL between every integration. Always separated via modules so no external payload cannot be even used on domain side. I tend to call them adapters which implement gateways or ports from core domain side. Greatest value for me here is that I am able to integration test them in isolation without having to involve business modules. Also when external services change, I usually don't need to touch any of my business modules because they are behind interface.

[@CodeOpinion]

Exactly! Thanks for the comment and insight.

[@ThinkTablet]

Love it, please make more videos around how to address complexity in code level. Great work thanks again.

[@leopoldodonnell1979]

Another, nicely concise presentation of an important architectural concept. Derek, I'd love to see you bundle all of these concepts into an e-book. I, for one, would make it required reading for all our tech leads - it would make a lot of design reviews shorter :-)

[@CodeOpinion]

Great suggestion!

[@mana20]

@@CodeOpinion I was curious if you were doing the channel to eventually promote full courses. Do you have any books you'd recommend?

[@pdevito]

Yeah, we have an ACL to interact with our legacy apps as we deprecate parts of it and it’s been really nice

[@mikemccarthy9855]

Very nice! Commands for the win! Utilizing the power of commands creates easy "seams" in your software/core domain that allow you to plug in 3rd part integrations, and build an anti-corruption layer quite easily.

[@leinh4245]

Why is it called "Anti-corruption layer"?

[@CodeOpinion]

Because you don't want to "corrupt" your service boundary with concepts from the outside.

[@vanhoangtran1270]

Anti-corruption layer is really great. I have implemented this one in my own framework called CellularJS|(it is available on github, you can see it).

[@rezcan]

Thanks!

[@CodeOpinion]

Thank You!

[@madollamike]

Amazing explanation! Thank you!

[@CodeOpinion]

You're welcome

[@jasminsabanovic869]

Hi, I appreciate your videos and guidance so much! - waiting for your book!

[@CodeOpinion]

Thanks for watching!

[@shashikumaarb]

How do we handle standardized data structures like FHIR or da Vinci standards which is industry standard and when they reach your org should we let that pass through various domains In organizations or define a ACL and translate it something Organized believes in? I feel the former because latter needs lot of translation and maintenance

[@mohammedabujayyab6146]

Thanks for the explanation! Is it a combination between Adapter Design Pattern and Facade Design Pattern?

[@staspanyukov4822]

Brilliant chanel

[@MarcosBelorio]

Thanks for the video, about ACL, do you usually implement a separate service or just a separate project inside your solution? I've implemented in a separate service and seems that the negative points are higher that positive points

[@CodeOpinion]

Doesn't have to be anything physical as in service or project. Just something that lives logically within a service boundary that does that translation. It will likely interact with some form of I/O to do inbound and/or outbound translation.

[@mana20]

Would your example of multiple ACLs relate to, for example multiple ride share companies like Lyft and Uber, that have a trip payload they send you, but in different formats. they each hit their own ACL, translate the data to your Trip format and then pass it to your trip service? Would your ACLs be completely independent, or would they share some base functionality?

[@CodeOpinion]

Excellent example! I would suspect all of them would be independent since their focus on interchanging and translating between you/them.

[@greggles_b]

Would you say that adapters within Hexagonal arch. are inherently ACLs? Or do you make the distinction when your adapters are doing more than just one-to-one data mapping, i.e they need to actually change the semantics/structure of the data in order to think of them as ACLs? Also, I’ve always found it hard to grasp what it means for a plain data response from an external service to have semantics. I feel they’re kind of implicit in how you want to use the data.

[@greggles_b]

Also, thanks for the video. Super interesting and well explained as always!

[@leopoldodonnell1979]

ACLs, while an extremely valuable architectural construct, are not uniformly required for all client consumers. Let's say you have some resources within your domain that are exposed via REST, or GraphQL. Some of your consumers will just take it like it is and conform to what the domain proscribes. This changes when clients can't consume these APIs/Messages as they are defined, or if the internal communication of services within the domain boundary need to change without effecting any of the clients outside of the domain boundary. To answer your question directly, some clients may need data transformations, transactional support, or the bundling/unbundling of requests into fewer/more requests. ACLs enable adaption for new use cases/clients. ACLs offer greater autonomy for teams that own a domain.

[@ofiry]

Derek, again great video. one question, where should the ACL be located? will it be in a different project inside the service, or a different service?

[@CodeOpinion]

I'd prefer to keep it within a service that knows how it's doing the translation either/or inbound and outbound. You can physically deploy that independently but it still belongs to a service.

[@codiguard]

Great video! I have a question - you mentioned that ACL can be something physical, does it mean that ACL can be some kind of service living in a separate server?

[@CodeOpinion]

Yes, it could be. But point being it doesn't have to be.

[@codiguard]

Sure, thanks.

[@srieen100]

So automapper fits the implementation part of ACL?

[@CodeOpinion]

Partially. It's not just about mapping data but can involve having to perform various operations. Eg, one inbound request may result in making multiple commands within your service boundary.

[@DasturlashniOrganamiz]

Thanks for the great content. Can you please have a look and share your opinion on The-Standard by Hassan Habib. I am really loving it. P.S. when I shared github repo of this document, I guess KZbin thought this is spam. You need to look for The standard in Github

[@CodeOpinion]

Thanks I'll take a look

[@mana20]

Thank you :)

[@CodeOpinion]

You're welcome!

[@jamesdube7597]

I swear you're reading my code lol... I had to do the same integrating with a number of services (yes I know its synchronous, business decisions). Basically what i did is, created an ApiResolver which takes in a response code and the name of the service, then it does a look up in its own collection of responses for a match and then it converts that to a standard api response that my service works with....

[@mabdullahsari]

You just reminded me of some of the ugliest pieces of code I've written within ACLs 🙃

[@CodeOpinion]

Ya sometimes it's not pretty, especially if you're doing a migration from a legacy system.