Event Lifecycles

Todo

write summary

Web: the life-cycle of a HTTP request

The request life-cycle of a request object in the HTTP context.

A request DTO enters the application via the request boundary. This is usually the API layer sitting on top of some interactor. In the pictured example, we have a GetGopher interactor whose task is to retrieve information about a store of gophers, accepting GopherRequests and returning GopherResponses. The user interaction is the request DTO and in this example is in plain JSON.

The interactor GetGopher then can be seen as a mapping of GetGopherRequests to GopherResponses. Because the requests and responses are plain dumb objects, this implementation is not dependent of any technology. It is the duty of the API layer to translate the request from, e.g., JSON, to the request DTO, but the interactor doesn’t know anything about the protocol or its environment.

GUI: the life-cycle of an event

In the GUI model, the architecture looks a bit simpler, since the host layer does all the important work for us. We don’t need to worry about serialization so much anymore.

The API layer of a GUI application translate user interactions to request objects. The Host layer sends an AddAuthorButtonClick event to the API. The API also listens to the AuthorNameFieldEdited event using which it keeps track of the contents of the form field. Once the AddAuthorButtonClick event is received, the API creates a CreateAuthor request DTO with the appropriate details and sends it to the interactor for processing. Once the interactor returns, the API layer pushes a response to the Host via some mechanism, e.g., by formating and sending a UserAdded event to the Host layer, which in turn handles the updating of the user list component using its own logic.

As you can see, a GUI application implemented with EBI is instantly a lot more complicated than a simple web server. This isn’t a coincidence, it’s natural: GUI apps are really complicated underneath.

The extra cost of such abstractions is that as the interactor and entity layer remain unmodified, you can easily swap the API and Host layer for another implementation. So you’re never tied to any certain interaction or delivery mechanism.