The Clean Architecture

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thanks to Uncle Bob, https://8thlight.com/blog/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean-architecture.html

  1. Independent of Frameworks. The architecture does not depend on the existence of some library of feature laden software. This allows you to use such frameworks as tools, rather than having to cram your system into their limited constraints.
  2. Testable. The business rules can be tested without the UI, Database, Web Server, or any other external element.
  3. Independent of UI. The UI can change easily, without changing the rest of the system. A Web UI could be replaced with a console UI, for example, without changing the business rules.
  4. Independent of Database. You can swap out Oracle or SQL Server, for Mongo, BigTable, CouchDB, or something else. Your business rules are not bound to the database.
  5. Independent of any external agency. In fact your business rules simply don’t know anything at all about the outside world.

The diagram at the top of this article is an attempt at integrating all these architectures into a single actionable idea.

The overriding rule that makes this architecture work is The Dependency Rule. This rule says that source code dependencies can only point inwards. Nothing in an inner circle can know anything at all about something in an outer circle. In particular, the name of something declared in an outer circle must not be mentioned by the code in an inner circle. That includes, functions, classes. variables, or any other named software entity.

 

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