kMolecules – Architectural abstractions for Kotlin and Java

The project will be archived soon since jMolecules supports Kotlin

jMolecules addon to ease Kotlin integration, all credits goes to the excellent jMolecules.

The difference between the original jMolecules and kMolecules is the module jmolecules-ddd that has been implemented to provide a great experience with DDD for Kotlin developers

️The project will be archived if this PR is accepted.

A set of libraries to help developers work with architectural concepts in Kotlin and Java. Goals:

  • Express that a piece of code (package, class, method…​) implements an architectural concept.

  • Make it easy for the human reader to determine what kind of architectural concepts a given piece of code is.

  • Allow tool integration (to do interesting stuff like generating persistence or static architecture analysis to check for validations of the architectural rules.)

Expressing DDD concepts

Example:

import org.kmolecules.ddd.annotation.*;

@Entity
class BankAccount { /* ... */ }

@ValueObject
class Currency { /* ... */ }

@Repository
class Accounts { /* ... */ }

When we take Ubiquitous Language serious, we want names (for classes, methods, etc.) that only contain words from the domain language. That means the titles of the building blocks should not be part of the names. So in a banking domain we don’t want BankAccountEntity, CurrencyVO or even AccountRepository as types. Instead, we want BankAccount, Currency and Accounts – like in the example above.

Still, we want to express that a given class (or other architectural element) is a special building block; i.e. uses a design pattern. kMolecules provide a set of standard annotations for the building blocks known from DDD.

Using a type based model

As an alternative to the above-mentioned annotations, kMolecules also provides a set of interfaces, largely based on the ideas presented in John Sullivan’s series “Advancing Enterprise DDD”. They allow expressing relationships between the building blocks right within the type system, so that the compiler can help to verify model correctness and the information can also be processed by Java reflection more easily.

  • Identifier — A type to represent types that are supposed to act as identifiers.

  • Identifiable<ID> — Anything that’s exposing an identifier.

  • Entity<T : AggregateRoot<T, *>, ID> : Identifiable<ID> — An entity, declaring to which AggregateRoot it belongs and which identifier it exposes.

  • AggregateRoot<T : AggregateRoot<T, ID>, ID : Identifier> : Entity<T, ID> — an aggregate root being an Entity belonging to itself exposing a dedicated Identifier

  • Association<T : AggregateRoot<T, ID>, ID : Identifier> : Identifiable<ID> — an explicit association to a target AggregateRoot.

This arrangement gives guidance to modeling and allows to easily verify the following rules, potentially via reflection:

  • Enforced, dedicated identifier types per aggregate to avoid identifiers for different aggregates mixed up.

  • AggregateRoot must only refer to Entity instances that were declared to belong to it.

  • AggregateRoots and Entitys must only refer to other AggregateRoots via Association instances.

jMolecules additional libraries

jMolecules provides additional libraries that work off the shelf perfectly with Kotlin.

Libraries (from jMolecules)

  • jmolecules-architecture — annotations to express architectural styles in code.

    • jmolecules-cqrs-architecture — CQRS architecture

      • @Command

      • @CommandDispatcher

      • @CommandHandler

      • @QueryModel

    • jmolecules-layered-architecture — Layered architecture

      • @DomainLayer

      • @ApplicationLayer

      • @InfrastructureLayer

      • @InterfaceLayer

    • jmolecules-onion-architecture — Onion architecture

      • Classic

        • @DomainModelRing

        • @DomainServiceRing

        • @ApplicationServiceRing

        • @InfrastructureRing

      • Simplified (does not separate domain model and services)

        • @DomainRing

        • @ApplicationRing

        • @InfrastructureRing

Installation

To use kMolecules in your project just install it from the Maven central repository.

Gradle

compile("com.github.jntakpe:kmolecules:1.0.0-RC3")

Maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.github.jntakpe</groupId>
  <artifactId>kmolecules</artifactId>
  <version>1.0.0-RC3</version>
</dependency>

GitHub

View Github