Simplifying code with Decorated Commands

Monday, 10 May 2021 05:37:00 UTC

Consider modelling many side effects as a single Command.

In a previous article I discussed how an abstraction can sometimes be leaky by omission. In this article, you'll see how removing the leak enables some beneficial refactoring. I'm going to assume that you've read the previous article.

The relative cost of the four CRUD operations #

In this article, you'll see code that implements an ASP.NET Controller action. It enables a REST client to update an existing reservation via a PUT request.

I chose to show you the Put method because it's the worst, and thereby the one where refactoring is most warranted. This seems to follow a pattern I've noticed over the years: data updates are always the worst.

Before I show you the code, I'd like to take a little detour to discuss this observation.

Consider the four CRUD operations. Which one is the easiest to implement and maintain, and which one gives you most grief?

Deletes are typically straightforward: A unique identifier is all it takes. The only small complication you may have to consider is idempotence. If you delete an entity once, it's gone. What should happen if you 'delete' it again? To be clear, I don't consider this a trick question. A delete operation should be idempotent, but sometimes, depending on the underlying storage technology, you may have to write a few lines of code to make that happen.

Reads are a little more complicated. I'm actually not sure if reads are more or less involved than create operations. The complexity is probably about the same. Reading a single document from a document database is easy, as is reading a single row from a database. Relational databases can make this a bit harder when you have to join tables, but when you get the hang of it, it's not that hard.

Create operations tend to be about as easy or difficult as reads. Adding a new document to a document database or BLOB storage is easy. Adding a complex entity with foreign key relationships in a relational database is a bit more complicated, but still doable.

Updates, though, are evil. In a document database, it may be easy enough if you can just replace the document wholesale. Often, however, updates involves delta detection. Particularly in databases, when foreign keys are involved, you may have to recursively track down all the related rows and either update those as well, or delete and recreate them.

As you'll see in the upcoming code example, an update typically also involves complicated auxiliary logic to determine what changed, and how to react to it.

For that reason, if possible, I prefer modelling data without supporting updates. Create/read/delete is fine, but if you don't support updates, you may not need deletes either. There's a reason I like Event Sourcing.

A complicated Put method #

My restaurant reservation API included this method that enabled REST clients to update reservations:

public async Task<ActionResult> Put(
    int restaurantId,
    string id,
    ReservationDto dto)
    if (dto is null)
        throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(dto));
    if (!Guid.TryParse(id, out var rid))
        return new NotFoundResult();
    Reservation? reservation = dto.Validate(rid);
    if (reservation is null)
        return new BadRequestResult();
    var restaurant = await RestaurantDatabase
    if (restaurant is null)
        return new NotFoundResult();
        await TryUpdate(restaurant, reservation).ConfigureAwait(false);

Had I written this code exclusively for myself, I'd written in a more functional style, as an impureim sandwich. (Actually, had I written this code exclusively for myself, I'd written it in F# or Haskell.) This code, however, is written for another audience, so I didn't want to assume that the reader knows about impureim sandwiches.

I still wanted to decompose the functionality into small blocks. There's still an echo of the impureim sandwich architecture in the Put method, because it handles most of the impure preparation - the top of the sandwich, so to speak.

The rest - any functional core there might be, as well as impure post-processing - it delegates to the TryUpdate method.

TryUpdate #

Here's the TryUpdate method:

private async Task<ActionResult> TryUpdate(
    Restaurant restaurant,
    Reservation reservation)
    using var scope = new TransactionScope(
    var existing = await Repository.ReadReservation(reservation.Id)
    if (existing is null)
        return new NotFoundResult();
    var ok = await WillAcceptUpdate(restaurant, reservation)
    if (!ok)
        return NoTables500InternalServerError();
    await Update(restaurant, reservation, existing)
    return new OkObjectResult(reservation.ToDto());

To be honest, this is mostly just more impure pre-processing. The functional core is hidden away inside the (impure) WillAcceptUpdate method, but I'm not going to show you that one. It's not important in this context.

If, however, the method decides that the update is possible, it'll make one more delegation, to the Update method.

I admit it: This isn't the prettiest code I've ever written. I did warn you, though. I chose this method as an example because it could really do with some refactoring. One problem I have with it is the naming. You have a Put method, which calls a TryUpdate method, which again calls an Update method.

Even though the Try prefix is a .NET idiom, I still feel that a regular reader could be easily confused, having to choose between TryUpdate and Update.

Still, let's soldier on and review the Update method as well. It's the last one, I promise.

Update #

Here's the Update method:

private async Task Update(
    Restaurant restaurant,
    Reservation reservation,
    Reservation existing)
    if (existing.Email != reservation.Email)
        await PostOffice
            .EmailReservationUpdating(restaurant.Id, existing)
    await Repository.Update(reservation).ConfigureAwait(false);
    await PostOffice
        .EmailReservationUpdated(restaurant.Id, reservation)

The method perfectly illustrates what I meant when I wrote that you often have to do various kinds of delta analysis when implementing an update - even if delta analysis isn't required by the data store.

This method does two things:

  • It sends emails
  • It updates the repository
Notice that if the email address changes, Update sends an email to the old address. This is an example of delta analysis. This only happens on a changing email address. It doesn't happen if the name or quantity changes.

The motivation is that it may serve to warn the user if someone tries to change the reservation. Only when the email address changes is it necessary to send an email to the old address.

In all cases, the method sends an email to the 'current' address.

This seems ripe for refactoring.

Plugging the leak #

The Update method is an asynchronous Command. It exclusively produces side effects, but it doesn't return anything (we'll regard Task as 'asynchronous unit').

I've known since 2011 that Commands are composable. Later, I also figured out the fundamental reason for that.

The Update method composes three other Commands - one conditional and two unconditional. This seems to call for some sort of composition: Chain of Responsibility, Decorator, or Composite. Common to these patterns, however, is that the object that they compose must share an API. In a language like C# it means that they must share a polymorphic type.

Which type might that be? Let's list the three method signatures in action, one after the other:

  • Task EmailReservationUpdating(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation)
  • Task Update(Reservation reservation)
  • Task EmailReservationUpdated(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation)
Do these three methods have anything in common?

The commonality might be easier to spot if we X out the names (which are only skin-deep, anyway):

  • Task Xxx(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation)
  • Task Xxx(                  Reservation reservation)
  • Task Xxx(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation)
They almost look like each other!

The only deviation is that the middle method (originally the Update method) lacks a restaurantId parameter.

As the previous article explained, though, this is a leaky abstraction by omission. Will plugging the leak enable a refactoring?

Let's try. Make restaurantId a parameter for all methods defined by the interface:

public interface IReservationsRepository
    Task Create(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation);
    Task<IReadOnlyCollection<Reservation>> ReadReservations(
        int restaurantId, DateTime min, DateTime max);
    Task<Reservation?> ReadReservation(int restaurantId, Guid id);
    Task Update(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation);
    Task Delete(int restaurantId, Guid id);

This is the suggested remedy from the previous article, so I put it here solely as a reminder.

An emailing Decorator #

There's a sequence to the actions in the Update method:

  1. It emails the old address about a changing address
  2. It updates the reservation
  3. It emails the current address about the update
It's easiest to preserve this order of actions if you implement a Decorator around the new version of IReservationsRepository:

public class EmailingReservationsRepository : IReservationsRepository
    public EmailingReservationsRepository(
        IPostOffice postOffice,
        IReservationsRepository inner)
        PostOffice = postOffice;
        Inner = inner;
    public IPostOffice PostOffice { get; }
    public IReservationsRepository Inner { get; }
    public async Task Update(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation)
        if (reservation is null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(reservation));
        var existing =
            await Inner.ReadReservation(restaurantId, reservation.Id)
        if (existing is { } && existing.Email != reservation.Email)
            await PostOffice
                .EmailReservationUpdating(restaurantId, existing)
        await Inner.Update(restaurantId, reservation)
        await PostOffice.EmailReservationUpdated(restaurantId, reservation)
    // Other members go here...

You may think that it seems odd to have a 'repository' that also sends emails. I think that this is mostly an artefact of unfortunate naming. Perhaps a follow-up change should be to rename both the interface and the Controller's Repository property. I'm open to suggestions, but for now, I'll leave the names as they are.

If you're still not convinced, consider an alternative architecture based on asynchronous message passing (e.g. CQRS). In such architectures, you'd put Commands on a message bus and think no more of it. A background process would then asynchronously perform all the actions, including sending emails and updating the data store. I think that people used to that kind of architecture wouldn't bat an eyelid by bus.Send(new UpdateReservation(/**/)).

This would also be close to the kind of design that Steven van Deursen and I describe in chapter 10 of our book.

Simplification #

This greatly simplifies things. The above Update method now becomes redundant and can be deleted. Instead, TryUpdate can now directly call Repository.Update:

private async Task<ActionResult> TryUpdate(
    Restaurant restaurant, Reservation reservation)
    using var scope = new TransactionScope(
    var existing = await Repository
        .ReadReservation(restaurant.Id, reservation.Id)
    if (existing is null)
        return new NotFoundResult();
    var ok = await WillAcceptUpdate(restaurant, reservation)
    if (!ok)
        return NoTables500InternalServerError();
    await Repository.Update(restaurant.Id, reservation)
    return new OkObjectResult(reservation.ToDto());

This also means that you can remove the PostOffice dependency from the Controller. Lots of things becomes simpler by this refactoring. It better separates concerns, so tests become simpler as well.

Conclusion #

You can simplify code by composing Commands. Candidate patterns for this are Chain of Responsibility, Decorator, and Composite. These patterns, however, require a common polymorphic type. Key to refactoring to these patterns is to identify such a common interface. In this article, I used the refactored IReservationsRepository interface.

Whenever a client calls a method on the repository, a change of state now automatically also sends emails. The client doesn't have to worry about that.

Consider modelling many related side-effects as a single composed Command.

Structural equality for better tests

Monday, 03 May 2021 05:45:00 UTC

A Fluent Builder as a Value Object?

If you've read a bit about unit testing, test-driven development, or other kinds of developer testing, you've probably come across a phrase like this:

Test behaviour, not implementation.
It's often taken to mean something like behaviour-driven development (BDD), and that's certainly one interpretation. I've no problem with that. My own Pluralsight course Outside-In Test-Driven Development shows a similar technique.

It'd be a logical fallacy, however, to thereby conclude that you can only apply that ideal in the large, but not in the small. That it's only possible to do it with coarse-grained tests at the boundary of the system, but not with unit testing.

It may be harder to do at the unit level, since when writing unit tests, you're closer to the implementation, so to speak. Writing the test before the implementation may, however, help

An example test #

Here's a test (using 2.4.1) I wrote before the implementation:

public void WithControllerHandlesSuffix(string name)
    var sut = new UrlBuilder();
    var actual = sut.WithController(name + "Controller");
    var expected = sut.WithController(name);
    Assert.Equal(expected, actual);

It tests an ASP.NET Core URL Builder; particular how it deals with the Controller suffix issue I ran into last year.

Do you notice something odd about this test?

It describes an equality relation between two individual projections of an initial UrlBuilder object (sut).

First of all, with a Mutable Fluent Builder the test would produce a false negative because aliasing would make the assertion a tautological assertion. Using an Immutable Fluent Builder, however, elegantly dodges that bullet: expected and actual are two separate objects.

Yet, it's possible to compare them. How?

Assertions #

I think that most people would have written the above test like this:

public void WithControllerHandlesSuffix(string name)
    var sut = new UrlBuilder();
    var actual = sut.WithController(name + "Controller");
    var expected = sut.WithController(name);
    Assert.Equal(expected.Controller, actual.Controller);

Instead of comparing two whole objects, this variation compares the Controller property values from two objects. In order for this to compile, you have to expose an implementation detail: that the class has a class field (here exposed as an automatic property) that keeps track of the Controller name.

I think that most object-oriented programmers' default habit is to write assertions that compare properties or class fields because in both C# and Java, objects by default only have reference equality. This leads to primitive obsession, this time in the context of test assertions.

Structural equality, on the other hand, makes it much easier to write concise and meaningful assertions. Just compare expected with actual.

Structural equality on a Builder? #

The UrlBuilder class has structural equality by overriding Equals and GetHashCode:

public override bool Equals(objectobj)
    return obj is UrlBuilder builder &&
           action == builder.action &&
           controller == builder.controller &&
           EqualityComparer<object?>.Default.Equals(values, builder.values);
public override int GetHashCode()
    return HashCode.Combine(action, controller, values);

That's why the above Assert.Equal statement works.

You may think that it's an odd choice to give a Fluent Builder structural equality, but why not? Since it's immutable, it's perfectly safe, and it makes things like testing much easier.

I rarely see people do this. Even programmers experienced with functional programming often seem to categorise structural equality as something associated exclusively with algebraic data types (ADTs). The UrlBuilder class, on the other hand, doesn't look like an ADT. After all, its public API exposes only behaviour, but no data:

public sealed class UrlBuilder
    public UrlBuilder()
    public UrlBuilder WithAction(string newAction)
    public UrlBuilder WithController(string newController)
    public UrlBuilder WithValues(object newValues)
    public Uri BuildAbsolute(IUrlHelper url)
    public override bool Equals(objectobj)
    public override int GetHashCode()

On the other hand, my threshold for when I give an immutable class structural equality is monotonically decreasing. Structural equality just makes things easier. The above test is just one example. Structural equality enables you to test behaviour instead of implementation details. In this example, the behaviour can be expressed as an equality relation between two different inputs.

UrlBuilder as an algebraic data type #

While it may seem odd or surprising to give a Fluent Builder structural equality, it's really isomorphic to a simple record type equipped with a few endomorphisms. (After all, we already know that the Builder pattern is isomorphic to the endomorphism monoid.) Let's make this explicit with F#.

Start by declaring a record type with a private definition:

type UrlBuilder = private { Action : string option; Controller : string option; Values : obj option }

While its definition is private, it's still an algebraic data type. Records in F# automatically have structural equality, and so does this one.

Since it's private, client code can't use the normal language constructs to create instances. Instead, the module that defines the type must supply an API that client code can use:

let emptyUrlBuilder = { Action = None; Controller = None; Values = None }
let withAction action ub = { ub with Action = Some action }
let withController (controller : string) ub =
    let index = controller.LastIndexOf ("controller", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)
    let newController = if 0 <= index then controller.Remove(index) else controller
    { ub with Controller = Some newController }
let withValues values ub = { ub with Values = Some values }

Without further ceremony you can port the initial test to F# as well:

let ``withController handles suffix`` name =
    let sut = emptyUrlBuilder
    let actual = sut |> withController (name + "Controller")
    let expected = sut |> withController name
    expected =! actual

In addition to this test also uses Unquote 6.0.0.

Even though UrlBuilder has no externally visible data, it automatically has structural equality. Functional programming is, indeed, more test-friendly than object-oriented programming.

This F# implementation is equivalent to the C# UrlBuilder class.

Conclusion #

You can safely give immutable objects structural equality. Besides other advantages, it makes it easier to write tests. With structural equality, you can express a relationship between the expected and actual outcome using high-level language.

These days, I don't really care if the type in question is a 'proper' algebraic data type. If it's immutable, I don't have to think much about it before giving it structural equality.



That is mostly true but not compeltely so. Consider the type

type MyRecord = { MyField: int -> bool }

If you try to compare two instances with F#'s = operator, then you will get this compilier error.

Error FS0001: The type 'MyRecord' does not support the 'equality' constraint because it is a record, union or struct with one or more structural element types which do not support the 'equality' constraint. Either avoid the use of equality with this type, or add the 'StructuralEquality' attribute to the type to determine which field type does not support equality.

Adding the StructuralEquality attribute results in this compiler error.

Error FS1180: The struct, record or union type 'MyRecord' has the 'StructuralEquality' attribute but the component type '(int -> bool)' does not satisfy the 'equality' constraint.

I learned all this the hard way. I had added some F# functions to some of my models in my MVU architecture. Later when I tried to test my root model for structual equality, I ran into this issue. Taking the suggestion in the compiler error, I fixed the problem by adding the StructuralEquality attribute (as well as the NoComparison attribute) to my root model and refactored the code to fix the resulting compiler errors.

During this time, I also realized that F#'s structual equality delegates to object.Equals(object) for types that extend object, which of course defaults to reference equality. For example, the following code compiles.

[<StructuralEquality>] [<NoComparison>] type MyRecord = { MyField: IDisposable }

2021-05-04 11:49 UTC

Tyson, thank you for writing. Yes, you're right. Language is imprecise. F# records automatically have structural equality, when possible.

2021-05-05 4:48 UTC

Leaky abstraction by omission

Monday, 26 April 2021 15:10:00 UTC

Sometimes, an abstraction can be leaky because it leaves something out.

Consider the following interface definition. What's wrong with it?

public interface IReservationsRepository
    Task Create(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation);
    Task<IReadOnlyCollection<Reservation>> ReadReservations(
        int restaurantId, DateTime min, DateTime max);
    Task<Reservation?> ReadReservation(Guid id);
    Task Update(Reservation reservation);
    Task Delete(Guid id);

Perhaps you think that the name is incorrect; that this really isn't an example of the Repository design pattern, as it's described in Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. Ironically, of all patterns, it may be the one most affected by semantic diffusion.

That's not what I have in mind, though. There's something else with that interface.

It's not its CRUD design, either. You could consider that a leaky abstraction, since it strongly implies a sort of persistent data store. That's a worthwhile discussion, but not what I have in mind today. There's something else wrong with the interface.

Consistency #

Look closer at the parameters for the various methods. The Create and ReadReservations methods take a restaurantId parameter, but the other three don't.

Why does the ReadReservations method take a restaurantId while ReadReservation doesn't? Why is that parameter required for Create, but not for Update? That doesn't seem consistent.

The reason is that each reservation has an ID (a GUID). Once the reservation exists, you can uniquely identify it to read, update, or delete it.

As the restaurantId parameter suggests, however, this interface is part of a multi-tenant code base. This code base implements an online restaurant reservation system as a REST API. It's an online service where each restaurant is a separate tenant.

While each reservation has a unique ID, the system still needs to associate it with a restaurant. Thus, the Create method must take a restaurantId parameter in order to associate the reservation with a restaurant.

Once the reservation is stored, however, it's possible to uniquely identify it with the ID. The ReadReservation, Update, and Delete methods need only the id to work.

On the other hand, when you're not querying on reservation ID, you'll need to identify the restaurant, as with the ReadReservations methods. If you didn't identify the restaurant in that method, you'd get all reservations in the requested range, from all tenants. That's not what you want. Therefore, you must supply the restaurantId to limit the query.

The interface is inconsistent, but also allows the underlying implementation to leak through.

Implied implementation detail #

If I told you that the implementation of IReservationsRepository is based on a relational database, can you imagine the design? You may want to stop reading and see if you can predict what the database looks like.

The interface strongly implies a design like this:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Reservations] (
    [Id]           INT              IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL,
    [At]           DATETIME2 (7)    NOT NULL,
    [Name]         NVARCHAR (50)    NOT NULL,
    [Email]        NVARCHAR (50)    NOT NULL,
    [Quantity]     INT              NOT NULL,
    [RestaurantId] INT              NOT NULL,

What I wrote above is even clearer now. You can't create a row in that table without supplying a RestaurantId, since that column has a NOT NULL constraint.

The PublicId column has a UNIQUE constraint, which means that you can uniquely read and manipulate a single row when you have an ID.

Since all reservations are in a single table, any query not based on PublicId should also filter on RestaurantId. If it doesn't, the result set could include reservations from all restaurants.

Other interpretations #

Is the above relational database design the only possible implementation? Perhaps not. You could implement the interface based on a document database as well. It'd be natural to store each reservation as a separate document with a unique ID. Again, once you have the ID, you can directly retrieve and manipulate the document.

Other implementations become harder, though. Imagine, for example, that you want to shard the database design: Each restaurant gets a separate database. Or perhaps, more realistically, you distribute tenants over a handful of databases, perhaps partitioned on physical location, or some other criterion.

With such a design, the ReadReservation, Update, and Delete methods become more inefficient. While you should be able to identify the correct shard if you have a restaurant ID, you don't have that information. Instead, you'll have to attempt the operation on all databases, thereby eliminating most sharding benefits.

In other words, the absence of the restaurantId parameter from some of the methods suggests certain implementation details.

Leak by omission #

I admit that I rarely run into this sort of problem. Usually, a leaky abstraction manifests by a language construct that contains too much information. This is typically an interface or base class that exposes implementation details by either requiring too specific inputs, or by returning data that reveals implementation details.

For a data access abstraction like the above 'repository', this most frequently happens when people design such an interface around an object-relational mapper (ORM). A class like Reservation would then typically carry ORM details around. Perhaps it inherits from an ORM base class, or perhaps (this is very common) it has a parameterless constructor or getters and setters that model the relationships of the database (these are often called navigation properties).

Another common examples of a leaky abstraction might be the presence of Connect and Disconnect methods. The Connect method may even take a connectionString parameter, clearly leaking that some sort of database is involved.

Yet another example is CQS-violating designs where a Create method returns a database ID.

All such leaky abstractions are leaky because they expose or require too much information.

The example in this article, on the contrary, is leaky because of a lack of detail.

Dependency Inversion Principle #

Ironically, I originally arrived at the above design because I followed the Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP). The clients of IReservationsRepository are ASP.NET Controller actions, like this Delete method:

public async Task Delete(int restaurantIdstring id)
    if (Guid.TryParse(id, out var rid))
        var r = await Repository.ReadReservation(rid)
        await Repository.Delete(rid).ConfigureAwait(false);
        if (r is { })
            await PostOffice.EmailReservationDeleted(restaurantId, r)

As Robert C. Martin explains about the Dependency Inversion Principle:

"clients [...] own the abstract interfaces"

Robert C. Martin, APPP, chapter 11
From that principle, it follows that the Delete method decides what IReservationsRepository.Delete looks like. It seems that the Controller action doesn't need to tell the Repository about the restaurantId when calling its Delete method. Supplying the reservation ID (rid) is enough.

There are, however, various problems with the above code. If the DIP suggests that the restaurantId is redundant when calling Repository.Delete, then why is it required when calling PostOffice.EmailReservationDeleted? This seems inconsistent.

Indeed it is.

As I often do, I arrived at the above Delete method via outside-in TDD, but as I observed a decade ago, TDD alone doesn't guarantee good design. Even when following the red-green-refactor checklist, I often fail to spot problems right away.

That's okay. TDD doesn't guarantee perfection, but done well it should set you up so that you can easily make changes.

Possible remedies #

I can think of two ways to address the problem. The simplest solution is to make the interface consistent by adding a restaurantId parameter to all methods:

public interface IReservationsRepository
    Task Create(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation);
    Task<IReadOnlyCollection<Reservation>> ReadReservations(
        int restaurantId, DateTime min, DateTime max);
    Task Update(int restaurantId, Reservation reservation);
    Task Delete(int restaurantId, Guid id);

This is the simplest solution, and the one that I prefer. In a future article, I'll show how it enabled me to significantly simplify the code base.

For good measure, though, I should also mention the opposite solution. Completely drain the interface of restaurantId parameters:

public interface IReservationsRepository
    Task Create(Reservation reservation);
    Task<IReadOnlyCollection<Reservation>> ReadReservations(
        DateTime min, DateTime max);
    Task<Reservation?> ReadReservation(Guid id);
    Task Update(Reservation reservation);
    Task Delete(Guid id);

How can that work in practice? After all, an implementation must have a restaurant ID in order to create a new row in the database.

It's possible to solve that problem by making the restaurantId an implementation detail. You could make it a constructor parameter for the concrete class, but this gives you another problem. Your Composition Root doesn't know the restaurant ID - after all, it's a run-time argument.

In a method like the above Delete Controller action, you'd have to translate the restaurantId run-time argument to an IReservationsRepository instance. There are various ways around that kind of problem, but they typically involve some kind of factory. That'd be yet another interface:

public interface IReservationsRepositoryFactory
    IReservationsRepository Create(int restaurantId);

That just makes the API more complicated. Factories give Dependency Injection a bad reputation. For that reason, I don't like this second alternative.

Conclusion #

Leaky abstractions usually express themselves as APIs that expose too many details; the implementation details leak through.

In this example, however, a leaky abstraction manifested as a lack of consistency. Some methods require a restaurantId argument, while others don't - because one particular implementation doesn't need that information.

It turned out, though, that when I was trying to simplify the overall code, this API design held me back. Consistently adding restaurantId parameters to all repository methods solved the problem. A future article tells that tale.


Thank you for the article Mark.

I was wondering whether another solution would be including restaurantId as a member of Reservation? That way it’s not needed by the Create method.

That just leaves ReadReservations as the last method that requires a restaurant ID, but one could argue a specialized read method such as this one doesn’t belong on a repository anyway. I personally tend to interpret these kinds of methods on a repository as a code smell on projects of a certain size.

I might just be missing the point of your article, but I would love to hear your thoughts. :)

2021-05-01 8:59 UTC

Tobias, thank you for writing. You raise a good point, and it might be an appropriate way to model the problem. While the thought had already crossed my mind, I must admit that I hadn't given it much thought.

For the individual CRUD operations, I admit that it might be an appropriate design option. You do, however, also point to the ReadReservations method as the odd man out. I applaud the intellectual honesty you exhibit by bring this up yourself, and I don't intend to misuse it by shooting down your idea. The fact that this method is somehow different might be an indication that it doesn't belong as a member of the same interface as the other four methods.

If that's the case, though, then where does it belong? One option would be to define all interfaces with only a single method:

public interface IReservationsDateRangeQuery
    Task<IReadOnlyCollection<Reservation>> ReadReservations(
        int restaurantId, DateTime min, DateTime max);

How should we deal with the restaurantId parameter in such an interface? Should it be included, as is the case here, or should we exclude it from the interface definition, like the following?

Task<IReadOnlyCollection<Reservation>> ReadReservations(DateTime min, DateTime max);

If we choose to exclude the restaurantId parameter from the interface, it'd be consistent with the CRUD interface that you imply. On the other hand, wouldn't it require some sort of factory, as I outlined above?

Conversely, if we decide to keep the restaurantId parameter as part of the interface definition, it seems inconsistent with the design your suggestion implies.

I'm not writing this to shoot down your suggestion. I find it a real conundrum.

I do think, though, that this might be an indication that there's some kind of abstraction that I've failed to make explicit. Some kind of Restaurant or Tenant type seems most likely.

My problem is that I actually do have a Restaurant class in my code base. That one, however, is a Value Object, so I'm loath to add impure methods to it.

For what it's worth, it's deliberation like this that makes software design interesting. You need to balance opposing forces. A good design is one that does so in a stable way. I'm not claiming that the code shown here does that. You've clearly put your finger on a sore spot, which suggests to me that there's more work to be done. Thank you for the inspiring input!

2021-05-02 11:04 UTC

Hi Mark, thank you for another great article!

I have worked on several small multi-tenant systems and I faced the same problem as you with the repository interface methods and the "tenant id" being mixed.

After several attempts and API iteration, my final design was to use what Steven van Deursen calls The Ambient Composition Model.

The idea is to inject an ITenantContext in the IReservationsRepository implementation and to use it as needed :

					public class ReservationsRepository : IReservationsRepository {
						private readonly ITenantContext _tenantContext;
						public ReservationRepository(ITenantContext tenantContext) {
							_tenantContext = tenantContex;
						public Task Create(Reservation reservation) {
							var restaurantId = _tenantContext.RestaurantId;
							// ...

In my case the implementation of the ITenantContext was retrieving the tenant from the route of the method. I think it could be the same for resolving the restaurantId.

This solution seems similar to your Factory solution but I'm not totally sure. In any case, like the Factory solution, this solution is heavier that the first you proposed.

Nonetheless I find some elegance in this solution with the tenant being injected by request in the implementation. What do you think? Did you have the same idea with the Factory solution?

2021-05-02 19:20 UTC

Thibaut, thank you for writing. Yes, that's another option. I've done something similar to that in the past.

In a sense, the concept of a tenant seems almost like a cross-cutting concern, so it makes sense to let it fade into the background, so to speak.

The reason I'm not too keen on that any longer is that it seems a bit too 'clever' in most settings. Consider the Delete Controller action shown above. Imagine that we inject restaurantId into all services - not only IReservationsRepository , but also into IPostOffice. The Delete method might look like this, then:

public async Task Delete(int restaurantIdstring id)
    if (Guid.TryParse(id, out var rid))
        var r = await Repository.ReadReservation(rid)
        await Repository.Delete(rid).ConfigureAwait(false);
        if (r is { })
            await PostOffice.EmailReservationDeleted(r)

The restaurantId parameter still has to be present, even though it's unused. This is likely to be puzzling to any developer not intimately familiar with the code base.

It's possible that you can pull some trick with the ASP.NET framework so that the parameter doesn't have to be there, but it'll still be present in the URL, and again, I'm concerned that most developers would be confused about this.

There's also another thing that bothers me about design like this: You can pull the restaurant ID out of the method's routing data, but this implies that you can do the same with the reservation ID. What makes the restaurant ID special, that it ought to be an injected dependency, while the reservation ID isn't?

I'm concerned that the answer to that question might be 'hand-wavy'. And if we can't defend making one ID a dependency and the other not, then we might take this to the logical conclusion and inject all routing values into services. If we do that, the Delete method might now look like this:

public async Task Delete(int restaurantIdstring id)
    if (Repository.IsIdValid)
        var r = await Repository.ReadReservation()
        await Repository.Delete().ConfigureAwait(false);
        if (r is { })
            await PostOffice.EmailReservationDeleted(r)

(I haven't tried to compile this, so there may be syntax errors.)

This seems really odd, although it's possible that we can salvage it by calling the dependency something else than Repository. It's not really a Unit of Work, but seems closer to that sort of design.

I agree that a tenant feels like something that ought to be 'automatically handled', but I wonder whether it's possible to do that without making the code 'too clever'.

2021-05-04 8:26 UTC

How would YAGNI come into play here? For instance, imagine your "client" code wasn't the Delete endpoint, but it was another app or endpoint that only had a "Guid reservationId", but not an "int restaurantId". In such case, wouldn't you be forced to add the restaurantId to the client code? What if this client code doesn't have an easy way to obtain such restaurantId? The reservation id is a global identifier, thus it makes sense that some application (be it a service, console, etc) would just get hold of the guid and nothing else, it's universally identifiable after all, it should be able to identify the reservation uniquely. This may require more roundtrips to the database, or forcing another client one-level above to provide the restaurantId (and this may even require politics and management to get in).

Wouldn't YAGNI say that you shouldn't add the restaurantId to the API, since you ain't gonna need it? I.e, you likely won't change your data access implementation or shard the database in a way that would require that additional restaurantId, and even if you did, perhaps the development effort to add the restaurantId would be the same in that future timeline as it would be right now, so it would be the same to make this change now or afterwards (and in such case, wouldn't it make much sense to make the change afterwards, when you actually need it?).

2021-05-09 23:54 UTC

Gonzalo, thank you for writing. The short answer is that I only 'discovered' the leaky abstraction because I did, in fact, need the restaurant ID. As part of creating, modifying, or deleting reservations, I also wanted to send email updates. For example, when updating a reservation, the system should send an email with a subject line like "Your reservation for Nono changed."

This meant that I had to figure out which name to put in the subject line. Given the restaurant ID, this is trivial, but without it, the system would first have to make a 'reverse lookup' to find the restaurant associated with the reservation ID. While it's technically possible, it seems overly complicated given that the restaurantId was already available at the entry point.

It's true that since the reservation ID is a GUID, it's globally unique. This, however, is an implementation detail. The system doesn't allow external client to refer to a reservation exclusively by a GUID. Rather, from the perspective of an external client, the ID of a reservation looks like While both restaurant and reservation IDs are visible within that string, a client can't use those IDs. The external reservation ID is the full (conceptually opaque) string.

I agree, though, that YAGNI is relevant in this context, too. If it's any consolation, I didn't change the code 'just in case' - I did, in fact, change it because I realised that I needed the modified design. But I admit that I didn't explicitly state that in this article.

You may also find the above discussion relevant.

2021-05-11 6:56 UTC

Consider including identity in URLs

Monday, 19 April 2021 06:29:00 UTC

Automatically enable act-on-behalf-of capabilities to REST APIs.

In 2013 I published a series of API design tips called REST lessons learned. Eight years have passed, but why not add another entry?

This one I've known about for years, but never written down. I often use it when I consult teams, and each time I'm reminded that since this seems like a recurring piece of advice, I ought to write it down.

Nutshell #

The problem, in a nutshell, relates to secured resources in a REST API. This could be any resource where the client must be authenticated before being able to access it. This design tip, however, seems to be mostly applicable when the resource in question itself represents an 'identity'.

To scope the problem, API designers rarely falter when modelling resources that seems unrelated to security or identity. For example, if you're modelling a product catalogue and you want to enable some clients to edit the catalogue, it's clear to most people that a product is unrelated to the identity of the client. Thus, people naturally design URL schemes like products/1234, and that's fine. You can make a PUT request against products/1234 to edit the resource, but you must supply credentials in order to do so.

What if, however, you want to edit your own profile information? There might be a REST resource that exposes your user name, address, bio, avatar, etc. You want to make profile information editable. How do you design the API?

API designers often design such an API based on a URL like profile, without any identifer in the URL. After all, a client must be authenticated in order to edit the resource, so the user ID will somehow be in the HTTP header (e.g. as a JSON Web Token (JWT)).

Consider, nonetheless, to include the identity in the URL.

A profile resource, then, would follow a scheme like profiles/1234. Consider identifying tenant IDs in a multi-tenant system in the same way: tenants/2345. Do this even when other IDs follow: tenants/2345/products/9876.

Typical approach, not recommended #

As outlined above, a typical design is to design an 'identity' resource without including the identification in the URL. If, for example, a client wants to change the avatar via a REST API, it might have to do it like this:

PUT /users HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5c[...]
  "bio":  "Danish software design",

The server-side code can extract the user ID and other authentication information from the Bearer token in the HTTP header. It can use this information to find the user ID and update its database. Technically, this gets the job done.

I'll outline some potential problems with such a design in a moment, but first I'll show a second example. This one is more subtle.

Imagine an online restaurant reservation system. The system enables guests to make reservations, edit them, and so on. When a potential guest attempts to make a reservation, the API should check if it can accept it. See The Maître d' kata for various conditions that may cause the restaurant to reject the reservation. One case might be that the reservation attempt is outside of the restaurant's opening hours.

Perhaps the API should expose a management API that enables the restaurant's maître d'hôtel to change the opening hours. Perhaps you decide to design the API to look like this:

PUT /restaurant HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5c[...]

Again, the Bearer token is supposed to contain enough information about the user to enable authentication and authorisation. This also gets the job done, but might paint you into a corner.

Separation of concerns #

The problem with the above approach is that it fails to separate concerns. When modelling identity, it's easy to conflate the identity of the resource with the identity of the client interacting with it. Those are two separate concerns.

What happens, for example, if you have so much success with the above restaurant reservation system that you decide to offer it as a multi-tenant service?

I often see a 'solution' to such a requirement where API designers now require clients to supply a 'tenant ID' in the HTTP header. To make it secure, you should probably make it a claim in the JWT supplied via the Authorization header, or something to that effect.

What's wrong with that? It conflates the identity of the client with the identity of the resource. This means that you can't easily enable capabilities where a client can act on behalf of someone else.

Imagine, for example, that you have three restaurants, each a tenant: Hipgnosta, Nono, and The Vatican Cellar. It turns out, however, that Hipgnosta and Nono have the same owners, and share a single administrative employee. These restaurants wish to let that employee manage both restaurants.

With the design outlined above, the employee would have to authenticate twice in order to make changes to both restaurants. That may not be a big deal for occasional edits to two restaurants, but imagine an employee who has to manage hundreds of franchises, and the situation becomes untenable.

You should enable act-on-behalf-of capabilities. This may sound like speculative generality, but it's such a low-hanging fruit that I think you should enable it even if you don't need it right now. Just put the resource identity in the URL: restaurants/456 and users/1234.

Even for user profiles, putting the user ID in the URL enables one client to view (if not edit) other user profiles, which may or may not be desirable.

The API should still demand that clients authenticate, but now you can distinguish the resource from the client making the request. This makes it possible for a client to act on behalf of others, given the right credentials.

Restaurant schedule example #

I'll show you a slightly different example. Instead of editing a restaurant's opening or closing hours, I'll show you how the maître d' can view the schedule for a day. A previous article already suggested that such a resource might exist in a code base I've recently written. A request and its response might look like this:

GET /restaurants/1/schedule/2022/8/21 HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJyZXN0YXVyYW5[...]

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  "year": 2022,
  "month": 8,
  "day": 21,
  "days": [
      "entries": [
          "reservations": [
              "name""Anne Kowics Chambers",
              "quantity": 5

I've simplified the example response by removing all links to make it more readable. After all, the shape of the response is irrelevant for this discussion. The point is the interaction between the request URL and the JWT.

The request is against a URL that identifies the restaurant in question. The 1 after restaurants in /restaurants/1/schedule/2022/8/21 identifies the restaurant as Hipgnosta to the API. (In reality, clients are expected to follow links. URLs are signed with HMACs, but I've trimmed those off as well to simplify the example.)

In this multi-tenant API, each restaurant is a separate tenant. Thus, the restaurant ID is really a tenant ID. The resource is fully identified via the URL.

What about the client identity? It's supplied via the JWT, which decoded contains these claims:

  "restaurant": [
  "nbf": 1618301674,
  "exp": 1618906474,
  "iat": 1618301674

Notice that the restaurant array contains a list of IDs that identify the tenants that the JWT can access. This particular JWT can access both restaurants 1 and 2112, which correspond to Hipgnosta and Nono. This represents the shared employee who can act on behalf of both restaurants.

Access control #

The API checks the that the incoming JWT has a restaurant claim that matches the incoming restaurant ID. Only if that's the case will it let the request through.

public async Task<ActionResult> Get(int restaurantId, int year, int month, int day)
    if (!AccessControlList.Authorize(restaurantId))
        return new ForbidResult();
    // Do the real work here...

The above code fragment is a copy from another article where I already shared some of the server-side authorisation code. Here I'll show some of the code that I didn't show in the other article.

In the other article, you can see how the AccessControlList is populated from HttpContext.User, but I didn't show the implementation of the FromUser function. Here it is:

internal static AccessControlList FromUser(ClaimsPrincipal user)
    var restaurantIds = user
        .SelectMany(c => ClaimToRestaurantId(c))
    return new AccessControlList(restaurantIds);
private static int[] ClaimToRestaurantId(Claim claim)
    if (int.TryParse(claim.Value, out var i))
        return new[] { i };
    return Array.Empty<int>();

What you need to notice is just that the FromUser function finds and parses all the "restaurant" claims it can find. The Authorize method, subsequently, just looks for the incoming restaurantId among them:

internal bool Authorize(int restaurantId)
    return restaurantIds.Contains(restaurantId);

Thus, the identity of the resource is decoupled from the identity of the client. In this example, the client acts on behalf of two tenants, but since an array can hold an arbitrary number of values, there's no hard limit to how many tenants a single client could act on behalf of.

Conclusion #

You don't always need act-on-behalf-of security features, but you never know if such a need might emerge in the future. You're going to need to check client credentials anyway, so the only extra step to avoid painting yourself into a corner is to put the resource identity in the URL - even if you believe that the resource identity and the client identity is the same. Such assumptions have a tendency to be proven wrong over time.

I'm not usually a proponent of speculative generality, but I also think that it's prudent to consider overall return of investment. The cost of adding the resource identity to the URL is low, while having to change URL schemes later may carry a higher cost (even if you force clients to follow links).

This fits one view on software architecture: Make it as easy to make reactive changes to the system, but identify the areas where change will be hard; make good ex-ante decisions about those.

Finally, I think that there's something fundamentally correct and consistent in putting user or tenant IDs in the URLs. After all, you put all other resource IDs (such as product IDs or customer IDs) in URLs.

Notice, in the above schedule example, how the restaurant ID isn't the only ID. The URL also carries information about year, month, and date. These further identify the schedule resource.

Putting user or tenant IDs in the URL effectively separates concerns. It enables you to discern the tenant or user from the client making the request.

Threading context through a catamorphism

Monday, 12 April 2021 11:09:00 UTC

A problem solved after 1½ years.

You've probably noticed that it's easier to learn something new if it looks or sounds like something you already know. As a native Dane, I've found it easier to learn English and German than Russian and Japanese. If you originally were a Java or C# developer, you probably find JavaScript more approachable than Clojure or APL.

I believe that this extends to design patterns and universal abstractions as well. If code new to you follows well-known abstractions, it may be easier to learn than if it's structured in an entirely ad-hoc manner. This is my motivation for learning such universal abstractions as monoids, functors, and catamorphisms.

I particularly enjoy when it's possible to apply such abstractions to a proper problem. This occasionally happens. One example is my small article series on a functional file system.

A fly in the ointment #

In those articles, I described how you could base most of the code on the rose tree catamorphism. There was just one snag. There was one function, calculateMoves, that I was unable to implement with the catamorphism. In the article, I acknowledged my failure:

"Earlier, I wrote that you can implement desired Tree functionality with the foldTree function, but that was a simplification. If you can implement the functionality of calculateMoves with foldTree, I don't know how."
This was true for both the Haskell proof of concept as well as the F# port.

Tyson Williams and I discussed this wart without getting closer to a solution.

As the idiom goes, perfect is the enemy of good, so I decided to move on, although it nagged me.

Problem, condensed #

The problem with the calculateMoves function was that it needed to thread a 'context' recursively through the entire data structure. In this case, the context was a file path.

When calculateMoves runs over the input tree, it needs to thread a relative path through the function, building it up as it traverses the data structure.

For example, if a leaf node named 1 is in a directory named b, which itself is a subdirectory of a, the relative path should be a/b/1. This example is straight from the test cases shown in both articles. You can also find the tests in the GitHub repository.

Each time calculateMoves visits a Node or Leaf it needs to know the parent path to calculate the destination path. As the articles show, this isn't too hard to do with regular pattern matching and recursion.

I couldn't figure out, however, how to thread the path through the function when I tried to implement it with the catamorphism.

Breakthrough #

While I'm ready to walk away from problems when I'm stuck, I tend to remember them. Sometimes, I run into a solution much later.

This happened to me yesterday. I was trying to answer a Stack Overflow question which was explicitly about the application of universal abstractions. Once more, I was stuck by being unable to thread a 'context' through a catamorphism. This time, instead of a path, the context was an indentation depth. Basically, the question was how to render a tree with proper indentation.

Again, this isn't hard if you resort to explicit pattern matching and recursion, but I couldn't figure out how to do it via the data structure's catamorphism.

Fortunately, the user danidiaz posted an awesome answer while I was struggling. The answer uses a trick that I hadn't noticed before: It threads the indentation depth through the data structure by using the catamorphism to produce a structure map with a function as the carrier type. Specifically, danidiaz defines the algebra Todo' (Int -> String) -> Int -> String to reduce a Todo' (Int -> String) to an Int -> String function. This function then gets initialised with the depth 0.

While I've been doing functional programming for years, I sometimes still tend to forget that functions are first-class values...

This trick, though, seems to be universally applicable. If you need to thread a context through a catamorphism, define the algebra to work on functions that take the context as an argument.

If this is a universally applicable trick, it also ought to work with the calculateMoves function.

Haskell re-implementation #

In my Haskell proof of concept, the calculateMoves function originally looked like this:

calculateMoves :: Tree FilePath FilePath -> Tree FilePath Move
calculateMoves = imp ""
  where imp path    (Leaf x) = Leaf $ Move x $ replaceDirectory x path
        imp path (Node x xs) = Node (path </> x) $ imp (path </> x) <$> xs

It uses an imp (for implementation) function to explicitly recurse over a Tree FilePath FilePath. Until yesterday, I couldn't come up with a better solution to thread the path through the data structure.

The new trick suggests that it'd be possible to implement the function on foldTree (the catamorphism) by using a function as the carrier type. Since the context to be threaded through the catamorphism is a String (the path), the catamorphism should produce a function that takes a String as argument. In other words, the carrier type of the Tree should be String -> Tree FilePath Move.

Let's expand on this: The type of foldTree is foldTree :: (a -> [c] -> c) -> (b -> c) -> Tree a b -> c. Usually, I tend to think of the type parameter c as the type of some value, but since it's unconstrained, it can also be a function. That's what we need here: c should be String -> Tree FilePath Move.

That's not too hard to do, because of currying. Just write functions that take an extra String argument and pass them to foldTree:

calculateMoves :: Tree FilePath FilePath -> Tree FilePath Move
calculateMoves t = foldTree fNode fLeaf t ""
    fLeaf :: FilePath -> String -> Tree FilePath Move
    fLeaf x    path = Leaf $ Move x $ replaceDirectory x path
    fNode :: FilePath -> [String -> Tree FilePath Move-> String -> Tree FilePath Move
    fNode x fs path = Node (path </> x) $ ($ path </> x) <$> fs

Here I've used type annotations for the local functions, but that's entirely optional:

calculateMoves :: Tree FilePath FilePath -> Tree FilePath Move
calculateMoves t = foldTree fNode fLeaf t ""
    fLeaf x    path = Leaf $ Move x $ replaceDirectory x path

I included the type annotations to make it a little clearer what's going on. Recall that the type of foldTree is foldTree :: (a -> [c] -> c) -> (b -> c) -> Tree a b -> c. First consider the second of the two function arguments, the one I call fLeaf in the above code. It's the simplest of the two, so it makes sense to start with that one.

The generic type of fLeaf is b -> c. How does that map to the type of fLeaf, which is FilePath -> String -> Tree FilePath Move?

Well, the Tree that the catamorphism runs on is a Tree FilePath FilePath. Mapped to the parametrically polymorphic type of foldTree that's Tree a b. In other words, b maps to FilePath. Thus, in order to fit the type of b -> c, the type corresponding to b in fLeaf must be FilePath. What's left? String -> Tree FilePath Move is what's left. The function takes a FilePath as input and returns a String -> Tree FilePath Move. In other words, c ~ String -> Tree FilePath Move.

How does that fit with fNode?

Generically, this function must have the type a -> [c] -> c. We've already established that c must be String -> Tree FilePath Move. Since the catamorphism runs on a Tree FilePath FilePath, we also know that a must be FilePath. Thus, plugging in all the types, fNode must have the type FilePath -> [String -> Tree FilePath Move] -> String -> Tree FilePath Move. Note, particularly, that the second argument is a list of functions. That's why I decided to name the parameter fs, for functions.

The entire expression foldTree fNode fLeaf t, then, has the type String -> Tree FilePath Move, since c is String -> Tree FilePath Move and the return type of foldTree is c.

The final trick is to apply this function to the initial relative path "", which returns a Tree FilePath Move.

This compiles and passes all tests. calculateMoves is now implemented using the Tree catamorphism, a goal that eluded me for more than one and a half years.

F# re-implementation #

With the Haskell proof of concept in place, it's fairly trivial to port the new implementation to the F# code base.

The calculateMoves function originally looked like this:

// Tree<string,FileInfo> -> Tree<string,Move>
let calculateMoves =
    let replaceDirectory (f : FileInfo) d =
        FileInfo (Path.Combine (d, f.Name))
    let rec imp path = function
        | Leaf x ->
            Leaf { Source = x; Destination = replaceDirectory x path }
        | Node (x, xs) ->
            let newNPath = Path.Combine (path, x)
            Tree.node newNPath ( (imp newNPath) xs)
    imp ""

In the F# code base, the catamorphism is called Tree.cata, but otherwise looks like the Haskell foldTree function. The refactoring is also similar:

let calculateMoves t =
    // FileInfo -> string -> FileInfo
    let replaceDirectory (f : FileInfo) d = FileInfo (Path.Combine (d, f.Name))
    // FileInfo -> string -> Tree<'a, Move>
    let fLeaf x path = Leaf { Source = x; Destination = replaceDirectory x path }
    // string -> (string -> Tree<string, 'a>) list -> string -> Tree<string, 'a>
    let fNode x fs path =
        let newNPath = Path.Combine (path, x)
        Tree.node newNPath ( (fun f -> f newNPath) fs)
    Tree.cata fNode fLeaf t ""

Again, the expression Tree.cata fNode fLeaf t has the type string -> Tree<string, Move>, so applying it to "" produces a Tree<string, Move> return value.

Conclusion #

I don't recall where I read the following, but I was under the impression that a data structure's catamorphism was its 'universal API', upon which you could implement any other functionality. I'd love it if it was true, but after my 2019 failure to implement calculateMoves via the Tree catamorphism, I wasn't sure if such a conjecture would hold.

I still don't know if that assertion holds universally, but at least one reason to doubt it has now been removed.


Excellent work Mark! I too had not forgotten about this, and it nagged me as well.

To some extent, I feel like your explanation of how to implement calculateMoves via Tree.cata is top-down. By top-down, I mean it might depend on discovering the key idea of having Tree.cata return a function and then figuring out the correct type for that function. A good thing about such top-down approaches is being immediately aware that a better solution likely exists even if it takes some time and effort to find it.

I was curious if a bottom-up approach would work. By bottom-up, I mean applying small refacorings to the code that are motivated by the principles, conventions, or style of functional programming. I do think I found such an approach. Of course it is a bit contradictory of me to only be able to find this approach after I read your presentation of the top-down approach. However, I am thinking of it like a kata. I now know such a bottom-up approach should be possible, and I want to find it.

My bottom-up approach is in this branch. Here is a brief summary of how I want myself to think of making those commits in that order.

Each case of the discriminated union could be extracted to its own function. This is easy to do in the Leaf case (so do it now), but it is not as easy to do in the Node case because of recursion, so delay that change for a bit. If we did extract both functions though, both functions would include the argument that I called pathToParent. Since it is passed in everywhere, it should be passed in nowhere (by eta reducing). To do that, we need it to be the last parameter to imp. After switching this order, we now deal with the recursion by doing it as soon as possible. Then the remaining code in that case can be extracted, and imp is essentially Tree.cata.

In this approach, I never thought about the possibility of Tree.cata returning a function. It just sort of fell out as a consequence of my other changes.

2021-04-12 17:49 UTC

Very nice!

In Haskell there is a library called recursion-schemes that showcases these types of recursion with catamorphisms, but also with many others recursion schemes. You can check it out and see if it gives you any new ideas.

Regarding this use of catamorphism, the library itself I believe shows a very similar example here, using the Reader type (which is isomorphic to the function you used in your example):

>>> :{
let pprint2 :: Tree Int -> String
    pprint2 = flip runReader 0 . cataA go
	go :: TreeF Int (Reader Int String)
	   -> Reader Int String
	go (NodeF i rss) = do
	  -- rss :: [Reader Int String]
	  -- ss  :: [String]
	  ss <- local (+ 2) $ sequence rss
	  indent <- ask
	  let s = replicate indent ' ' ++ "* " ++ show i
	  pure $ intercalate "\n" (s : ss)
>>> putStrLn $ pprint2 myTree
* 0
  * 1
  * 2
  * 3
    * 31
      * 311
	* 3111
	* 3112
2021-04-14 02:27 UTC

Gonzalo, thank you for reminding me of the recursion-schemes library. It's one of those tomes of knowledge of which I'm aware, but never really have gotten around to look at...

2021-04-16 6:29 UTC

Mazes on Voronoi tessellations

Monday, 05 April 2021 09:03:00 UTC

Recursive backtracker maze generation on a Voronoi diagram.

Today's blog post appears on Observable. It's an interactive environment where you can play with and fork the code. Go there to read it.

Recursive backtracker algorithm running on a Voronoi tessellation.

Observable is a really neat platform which has managed to do what I thought was nigh-impossible: make me return to JavaScript. The site's been around for some years, and I hope it'll be around for even more years.

ploeh blog, on the other hand, has been around since 2009, and I intend to keep it around for much longer. Who knows if Observable will outlive the blog. Enjoy the article while it's there.

Table-driven tennis scoring

Monday, 29 March 2021 06:15:00 UTC

Probably the most boring implementation of the tennis kata I've ever written.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I keep coming back to the tennis kata. It's an interesting little problem to attack from various angles.

The tennis scoring rules essentially describe a finite state machine, and while I was thinking about the state transitions involved, I came across an article by Michael McCandless about scoring tennis using finite-state automata.

This isn't the first time I've thought about simply enumerating all possible states in the state machine, but I decided to spend half an hour on actually doing it. While Michael McCandless shows that an optimisation is possible, his minimised version doesn't enable us to report all intermediary states with the correct labels. For example, he optimises away thirty-all by replacing it with deuce. The end result is still the same, in the sense that the minimised state machine will arrive at the same winner for the same sequence of balls, but it can't correctly report the score while the game is in progress.

For that reason, I decided to use his non-optimised state machine as a launch pad.

States #

I used F# to enumerate all twenty states:

type Score =
    | LoveAll
    | FifteenLove
    | LoveFifteen
    | ThirtyLove
    | FifteenAll
    | LoveThirty
    | FortyLove
    | ThirtyFifteen
    | FifteenThirty
    | LoveForty
    | FortyFifteen
    | ThirtyAll
    | FifteenForty
    | GamePlayerOne
    | FortyThirty
    | ThirtyForty
    | GamePlayerTwo
    | AdvantagePlayerOne
    | Deuce
    | AdvantagePlayerTwo

Utterly boring, yes, but perhaps boring code might be good code.

Table-driven methods #

Code Complete describes a programming technique called table-driven methods. The idea is to replace branching instructions such as if, else, and switch with a lookup table. The book assumes that the table exists in memory, but in this case, we can implement the table lookup with pattern matching:

// Score -> Score
let ballOne = function
    | LoveAll            -> FifteenLove
    | FifteenLove        -> ThirtyLove
    | LoveFifteen        -> FifteenAll
    | ThirtyLove         -> FortyLove
    | FifteenAll         -> ThirtyFifteen
    | LoveThirty         -> FifteenThirty
    | FortyLove          -> GamePlayerOne
    | ThirtyFifteen      -> FortyFifteen
    | FifteenThirty      -> ThirtyAll
    | LoveForty          -> FifteenForty
    | FortyFifteen       -> GamePlayerOne
    | ThirtyAll          -> FortyThirty
    | FifteenForty       -> ThirtyForty
    | GamePlayerOne      -> GamePlayerOne
    | FortyThirty        -> GamePlayerOne
    | ThirtyForty        -> Deuce
    | GamePlayerTwo      -> GamePlayerTwo
    | AdvantagePlayerOne -> GamePlayerOne
    | Deuce              -> AdvantagePlayerOne
    | AdvantagePlayerTwo -> Deuce

The ballOne function returns the new score when player one wins a ball. It takes the old score as input.

I'm going to leave ballTwo as an exercise to the reader.

Smoke test #

Does it work, then? Here's a few interactions with the API in F# Interactive:

> ballOne LoveAll;;
val it : Score = FifteenLove

> LoveAll |> ballOne |> ballTwo;;
val it : Score = FifteenAll

> LoveAll |> ballOne |> ballTwo |> ballTwo;;
val it : Score = FifteenThirty

> LoveAll |> ballOne |> ballTwo |> ballTwo |> ballTwo;;
val it : Score = FifteenForty

> LoveAll |> ballOne |> ballTwo |> ballTwo |> ballTwo |> ballOne;;
val it : Score = ThirtyForty

> LoveAll |> ballOne |> ballTwo |> ballTwo |> ballTwo |> ballOne |> ballTwo;;
val it : Score = GamePlayerTwo

It looks like it's working.

Automated tests #

Should I be writing unit tests for this implementation?

I don't see how a test would be anything but a duplication of the two 'transition tables'. Given that the score is thirty-love, when player one wins the ball, then the new score should be forty-love. Indeed, the ballOne function already states that.

We trust tests because they are simple. When the implementation is as simple as the test that would exercise it, then what's the benefit of the test?

To be clear, there are still compelling reasons to write tests for some simple implementations, but that's another discussion. I don't think those reasons apply here. I'll write no tests.

Code size #

While this code is utterly dull, it takes up some space. In all, it runs to 67 lines of code.

For comparison, the code base that evolves throughout my Types + Properties = Software article series is 65 lines of code, not counting the tests. When I also count the tests, that entire code base contains around 300 lines of code. That's more than four times as much code.

Preliminary research implies that bug count correlates linearly with line count. The more lines of code, the more bugs.

While I believe that this is probably a simplistic rule of thumb, there's much to like about smaller code bases. In total, this utterly dull implementation is actually smaller than a comparable implementation built from small functions.

Conclusion #

Many software problems can be modelled as finite state machines. I find that this is often the case in my own field of line-of-business software and web services.

It's not always possible to exhaustively enumerate all states, because each 'type' of state carries data that can't practically be enumerated. For example, polling consumers need to carry timing statistics. These statistics influence how the state machine transitions, but the range of possible values is so vast that it can't be enumerated as types.

It may not happen often that you can fully enumerate all states and transitions of a finite state machine, but I think it's worthwhile to be aware of such refactoring opportunities. It might make your code dully simple.


Hi Mark, I have had a similar experience whilst coding a Shut the box game, when trying to detect if it was game over or not.
Originally it was a complex set of loops to calculate all the discrete summands for each roll of the dice, then checking if the remaining flaps were in that set. This was done along with a suite of tests for every possible combination set of summands up to 12 (for 2 dice).
Then whilst explaining the pain in writing this to a friend, they simply said, there's only a finite list, why not hard code them?, and that's what I went with, a dictionary with each possible roll from 2 dice, and the possible values from the flaps that could be used to meet that roll. All the tests were removed; as you pointed out, they would just be a reimplmentation of the table.

2021-04-07 13:30 UTC

Dave, thank you for writing. It's good to hear that you have a similar experience. I wonder if it's constrained to game simulation, or if 'real-world' examples exist.

2021-04-09 6:30 UTC

The dispassionate developer

Monday, 22 March 2021 06:50:00 UTC

Caring for your craft is fine, but should you work for free?

I've met many passionate developers in my career. Programmers who are deeply interested in technology, programming languages, methodology, and self-improvement. I've also seen many online profiles where people present themselves as 'passionate developers'.

These are the people who organise and speak at user groups. They write blog posts and host podcasts. They contribute to open source development in their free time.

I suppose that I can check many of those boxes myself. In the last few years, though, I've become increasingly sceptic that this is a good idea.

Working for free #

In the last five years or so, I've noticed what looks like a new trend. Programmers contact me to ask about paid mentorship. They offer to pay me out of their own pocket to mentor them.

I find that flattering, but it also makes me increasingly disenchanted with the software development industry. To be clear, this isn't an attack on the good people who care so much about their craft that they are willing to spend their hard-earned cash on improving their skill. This is more a reflection on employers.

For reasons that are complicated and that I don't fully understand, the software development community in the eighties and nineties developed a culture of anti-capitalism and liberal values that put technology on a pedestal for its own sake. Open source good; commercial software bad. Free software good; commercial software bad.

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to such ideas, but it's seems clear, now, that these ideas have had unintended consequences. The idea of free software, for example, has led to a software economy where you, the user, are no longer the customer, but the product.

The idea of open source, too, seems largely defunct as a means of 'sticking it to the man'. The big tech companies now embrace open source. Despite initial enmity towards open source, Microsoft now owns GitHub and is one of the most active contributors. Google and Facebook control popular front-end platforms such as Angular and React, as well as many other technologies such as Android or GraphQL. Continue the list at your own leisure.

Developing open source is seen as a way to establish credibility, not only for companies, but for individuals as well. Would you like a cool job in tech? Show me your open-source portfolio.

Granted, the focus on open-source contributions as a replacement for a CV seems to have peaked, and good riddance.

I deliberately chose to use the word portfolio, above. Like a struggling artist, you're expected to show up with such a stunning sample of your work that you amaze your potential new employer and blow away your competition. Unlike struggling artists, though, you've already given away everything in your portfolio, and so have other job applicants. Employers benefit from this. You work for free.

The passion ethos #

You're expected to 'contribute' to open source software. Why? Because employers want employees who are passionate about their craft.

As you start to ponder the implied ethos, the stranger it gets. Would you like engineers to be passionate as they design new bridges? Would you like a surgeon to be passionate as she operates on you? Would you like judges to be passionate as they pass sentence on your friend?

I'd like such people to care about their vocation, but I'd prefer that they keep a cool head and make as rational decisions as possible.

Why should programmers be passionate?

I don't think that it's in our interest to be passionate, but it is in employers' interest. Not only are passionate people expected to work for free, they're also easier to manipulate. Tell a passionate person something he wants to hear, and he may turn off further critical thinking because the praise feels good.

Some open-source maintainers have created crucial software that runs everywhere. Companies make millions off that free software, while maintainers are often left with an increasing support burden and no money.

They do, however, often get a pat on the back. They get invited to speak at conferences, and can add creator of Xyz to their social media bios.

Until they burn out, that is. Passion, after all, comes from the Latin for suffering.

Self-improvement #

I remember consulting with a development organisation, helping them adopt some new technology. As my engagement was winding down, I had a meeting with the manager to discuss how they should be able to carry on without me. This was back in my Microsoft days, so I suggested that they institute a training programme for the employees. To give it structure, they could, for example, study for some Microsoft certifications.

The development manager immediately shot down that idea: "If we do that, they'll leave us once they have the certification."

I was flabbergasted.

You've probably seen quotes like this:

"What happens if we train our people and they leave?"

"What happens if we don't and they stay?"

This is one of those bon mots that seem impossible to attribute to a particular source, but the idea is clear enough. The sentiment doesn't seem to represent mainstream behaviour, though.

Granted, I've met more than one visionary leader willing to invest in employees' careers, but most managers don't.

While I teach and coach internationally, I naturally have more experience with my home region of Copenhagen, and more broadly Scandinavia. Here, it's a common position that anything that relates to work should only happen during work hours. If the employer doesn't allow training on the job, then most employees don't train.

What happens if you don't keep up to date with new methodologies, new frameworks, new programming languages? Your skill set becomes obsolete. Not overnight, but over the years. Finding a new job becomes harder and harder.

As your marketability atrophies, your employer can treat you worse and worse. After all, where are you going to go?

If you're tired of working with legacy code without tests, most of your suggestions for improvements will be met by a shrug. We don't have time for that now. It's more important to deliver value to the customer.

You'll have to work long hours and weekends fire-fighting 'unexpected' issues in production while still meeting deadlines.

A sufficiently cynical employer may have no qualms keeping employees busy this way.

To be clear, I'm not saying that it's good business sense to treat skilled employees like this, and I'm not saying that this is how all employers conduct business, but I've seen enough development organisations that fit the description.

As disappointing as it may be, keeping up to date with technology is your responsibility, and if you can't sneak in some time for self-improvement at work, you'll have to do it on your own time.

This has little to do with passion, but much to do with self-preservation.

Can I help you? #

The programmers who contact me (and others) for mentorship are the enlightened ones who've already figured this out.

That doesn't mean that I'm comfortable taking people's hard-earned money. If I teach you something that improves your productivity, your employer benefits, too. I think that your employer should pay for that.

I'm aware that most companies don't want to do that. It's also my experience that while most employers couldn't care less whether you pay me for mentorship, they don't want you to show me their code. This basically means that I can't really mentor you, unless you can reproduce the problems you're having as anonymised code examples.

But if you can do that, you can ask the whole internet. You can try asking on Stack Overflow and then ping me. You're also welcome to ask me. If your minimal working example is interesting, I may turn it into a blog post, and you pay nothing.

People also ask me how they can convince their managers or colleagues to do things differently. I often wonder why they don't make technical decisions already, but this may be my cultural bias talking. In Denmark you can often get away with the ask-for-forgiveness-rather-than-permission attitude, but it may not be a good idea in your culture.

Can I magically convince your manager to do things differently? Not magically, but I do know an effective trick: get him or her to hire me (or another expensive consultant). Most people don't heed advice given for free, but if they pay dearly for it, they tend to pay attention.

Other than that, I can only help you as I've passionately tried to help the world-wide community for decades: by blogging, answering questions on Stack Overflow, writing books, speaking at user groups and conferences, publishing videos, and so on.

Ticking most of the boxes #

Yes, I know that I fit the mould of the passionate developer. I've blogged regularly since 2006, I've answered thousands of questions on Stack Overflow, I've given more than a hundred presentations, been a podcast guest, and co-written a book, none of which has made me rich. If I don't do it for the passion, then why do I do it?

Sometimes it's hard and tedious work, but even so, I do much of it because I can't really help it. I like to write and teach. I suppose that makes me passionate.

My point with this article isn't that there's anything wrong with being passionate about software development. The point is that you might want to regard it as a weakness rather than an asset. If you are passionate, beware that someone doesn't take advantage of you.

I realise that I didn't view the world like this when I started blogging in January 2006. I was driven by my passion. In retrospect, though, I think that I have been both privileged and fortunate. I'm not sure my career path is reproducible today.

When I started blogging, it was a new-fangled thing. Just the fact that you blogged was enough to you get a little attention. I was in the right place at the right time.

The same is true for Stack Overflow. The site was still fairly new when I started, and a lot of frequently asked questions were only asked on my watch. I still get upvotes on answers from 2009, because these are questions that people still ask. I was just lucky enough to be around the first time it was asked on the site.

I'm also privileged by being an able-bodied man born into the middle class in one the world's richest countries. I received a free education. Denmark has free health care and generous social security. Taking some chances with your career in such an environment isn't even reckless. I've worked for more than one startup. That's not risky here. Twice, I've worked for a company that went out of business; in none of those cases did I lose money.

Yes, I've been fortunate, but my point is that you should probably not use my career as a model for yours, just as you shouldn't use those of Robert C. Martin, Kent Beck, or Martin Fowler. It's hardly a reproducible career path.

Conclusion #

What can you do, then, if you want to stand out from the crowd? How do you advance your software development career?

I don't know. I never claimed that this was easy.

Being good at something helps, but you must also make sure that the right people know what you're good at. You're probably still going to have to invest some of your 'free' time to make that happen.

Just beware that you aren't being taken advantage of. Be dispassionate.


Thanks Mark for your post.

I really relate to your comment about portfolio. I am still a young developer, not even 30 years old. A few years ago, I had an unhealthy obsession, that I should have a portfolio, otherwise I would be having a hard time finding job.

I am not entirely sure where this thought was coming from, but it is not important in what I want to convey. I was worrying that I do not have a portfolio and that anxiety itself, prevented me from doing any real work to have anything to showcase. Kinda vicious cycle.

Anyways, even without a portfolio, I didn't have any troubles switching jobs. I focused on presenting what I have learned in every project I worked on. What was good about it, what were the struggles. I presented myself not as a just a "mercenary" if you will. I always gave my best at jobs and at the interviews and somehow managed to prove to myself that a portfolio is not a must.

Granted, everybody's experience is different and we all work in different market conditions. But my takeaway is - don't fixate on a thing, if it's not an issue. That's kinda what I was doing a few years back.

2021-03-28 16:25 UTC

Pendulum swing: pure by default

Monday, 15 March 2021 06:47:00 UTC

Favour pure functions over polymorphic dependencies.

This is an article in a small series of articles about personal pendulum swings. Here, I'll discuss another contemporary one-eighty. This one is older than the other two I've discussed in this article series, but I believe that it deserves to be included.

Once upon I time, I used to consider Dependency Injection (DI) and injected interfaces an unequivocal good: the more, the merrier. These days, I tend to only model true application dependencies as injected dependencies. For the rest, I use pure functions.

Background #

When I started my programming career, I'd barely taught myself to program. I worked in both Visual Basic, VBScript, and C++ before I encountered the concept of an interface. What C++ I wrote was entirely procedural, and I don't recall being aware of inheritance. Visual Basic 6 didn't have inheritance, and I'm fairly sure that VBScript didn't, either.

I vaguely recall first being introduced to the concept of an interface in Visual Basic. It took me some time to wrap my head around it, and while I thought it seemed clever, I couldn't find any practical use for it.

I think that I wrote my first professional C# code base in 2002. We didn't use Dependency Injection or interfaces. I don't even recall that we used much inheritance.

Inject all the things #

When I discovered test-driven development (TDD) the year after, it didn't take me too long to figure out that I'd need to isolate units from their dependencies. Based on initial successes, I even wrote an article about mock objects for MSDN Magazine October 2004.

At that time I'd made interfaces a part of my active technique. I still struggled with how to replace a unit's 'real' dependencies with the mock objects. Initially, I used what I in Dependency Injection in .NET later called Bastard Injection. As I also described in the book, things took a dark turn for while as I discovered the Service Locator anti-pattern - only, at that time, I didn't realise that it was an anti-pattern. Soon after, fortunately, I discovered Pure DI.

That problem solved, I began an era of my programming career where everything became an interface. It does enable unit testing, so it's better than not being able to test, but after some years I began to sense the limits.

Perhaps the worst problem is that you get a deluge of interfaces. Many of these interfaces have similar-sounding names like IReservationsManager and IRestaurantManager. This makes discoverability harder: Which of these interfaces should you use? One defines a TrySave method, the other a Check method, and they aren't that different.

This wasn't clear to me when I worked in teams with one or two programmers. Once I saw how this played out in larger teams, however, I began to understand that one developer's interface remained undiscovered by other team members. When existing 'abstractions' are unclear, it leads to frequent reinvention of interfaces to implement the same functionality. Duplication abounds.

Designing with many fine-grained dependencies also has a tendency drag into existence many factory interfaces, a well-known design smell.

Have a sandwich #

It's remarkable how effectively you can lie to yourself. As late as 2017 I still concluded that fine-grained dependencies were best, despite most of my arguments pointing in another direction.

I first encountered functional programming in 2010, but was off to a slow start. It took me years before I realised that Dependency Injection isn't functional. There are other ways to address the problem of separating pure functions from impure actions, the simplest of which is the impureim sandwich.

Which parts of the application architecture are inherently impure? The usual suspects: the system clock, random number generators, the file system, databases, network resources. Notice how these are the dependencies that you usually need to replace with Test Doubles in order to make unit tests deterministic.

It makes sense to model these as dependencies. I still define interfaces for those and use Dependency Injection to control them. I do, however, use the impureim sandwich architecture to deal with the impure actions first, so that I can then delegate all the complex decision logic to pure functions.

Pure functions are intrinsically testable, so that solves many of the problems with testability. There's still a need to test how the impure actions interact with the pure functions. Here I take a step up in the Test Pyramid and write just enough state-based integration tests to render it probable that the integration works as intended. You can see an example of such a test here.

Conclusion #

From having favoured fine-grained Dependency Injection, I now write all decision logic as pure functions by default. These only need to implement interfaces if you need the logic of the system to be interchangeable, which isn't that often. I do still use Dependency Injection for the impure dependencies of the system. There's usually only a handful of those.

Pendulum swing: sealed by default

Monday, 08 March 2021 07:28:00 UTC

Inheritance is evil. Seal your classes.

This is an article in a small series of articles about personal pendulum swings. Here, I document another recent change of heart that's been a long way coming. In short, I now seal C# classes whenever I remember to do it.

Background #

After I discovered test-driven development (TDD) (circa 2003) I embarked on a quest for proper ways to enable testability. Automated tests should be deterministic, but real software systems rarely are. Software depends on the system clock, random number generators, the file system, the states of databases, web services, and so on. All of these may change independently of the software, making it difficult to express an automated systems test in a deterministic manner.

This is a known problem in TDD. In order to get the system under test (SUT) under control, you have to introduce what Michael Feathers calls seams. In C#, there's traditionally been two ways you could do that: extract and override, and interfaces.

The original Framework Design Guidelines explicitly recommended base classes over interfaces, and I wasn't wise to how unfortunate that recommendation was. For a long time, I'd define abstractions with (abstract) base classes. I was even envious of Java, where instance members are virtual (overridable) by default. In C# you must explicitly declare a method virtual to make it overridable.

Abstract base classes aren't too bad if you leave them completely empty, but I never had much success with non-abstract base classes and virtual members and the whole extract-and-override manoeuvre. I soon concluded that Dependency Injection with interfaces was a better alternative.

Even after I changed to exclusively relying on interfaces (instead of abstract base classes), remnants of the rule stuck with me for years: unsealed good; sealed bad. Even today, the framework design guidelines favour unsealed classes:

"CONSIDER using unsealed classes with no added virtual or protected members as a great way to provide inexpensive yet much appreciated extensibility to a framework."

I can no longer agree with this guidance; I think it's poor advice.

You don't need inheritance #

Base classes imply class inheritance as a reuse and extensibility mechanism. We've known since 1994, though, that inheritance probably isn't the best design principle.

"Favor object composition over class inheritance."

In single-inheritance languages like C# and Java, inheritance is just evil. Once you decide to inherit from a base class, you exclude all other base classes. Inheritance signifies a single 'yes' and an infinity of 'noes'. This is particularly problematic if you rely on inheritance for reuse. You can only 'reuse' a single base class, which again leads to duplication or bloated base classes.

It's been years (probably more than a decade) since I stopped relying on base classes for anything. You don't need inheritance. Haskell doesn't have it at all, and I only use it in C# when a framework forces me to derive from some base class.

There's little you can do with an abstract class that you can't do in some other way. Abstract classes are isomorphic with Dependency Injection up to accessibility.

Seal #

If I already follow a design principle of not relying on inheritance, then why keep classes unsealed? Explicit is better than implicit, so why not make that principle visible? Seal classes.

It doesn't have any immediate impact on the code, but it might make it clearer to other programmers that an explicit decision was made.

You already saw examples in the previous article: Both Month and Seating are sealed classes. They're also immutable records. I seal more than record types, too:

public sealed class HomeController

I seal Controllers, as well as services:

public sealed class SmtpPostOffice : IPostOffice

Another example is an ASP.NET filter named UrlIntegrityFilter.

A common counter-argument is that 'you may need extensibility in the future':

"by using "sealed" and not virtual in libs dev says "I thought of all extension point" which seems arrogant"

I agree that it'd be arrogant to claim that you've thought about all extension points. Trying to predict future need is futile.

I don't agree, however, that making everything virtual is a good idea, but it's because I disagree with the underlying premise. The presupposition is that extensibility should be enabled through inheritance. If it's not already clear, I believe that this has many undesirable consequences. There are better ways to enable extensibility than through inheritance.

Conclusion #

I've begun to routinely seal new classes. I don't always remember to do it, but I think that I ought to. As I also explained in the previous article, this is only my default. If something has to be a base class, that's still an option. Likewise, just because a class starts out sealed doesn't mean that it has to stay sealed forever. While sealing an unsealed class is a breaking change, unsealing a sealed class isn't.

I can't think of any reason why I'd do that, though.

Next: Pendulum swing: pure by default.

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