Programming to an interface

The idea behind programming to an interface is to base the code primarily on interfaces and only use concrete classes at the time of instantiation. In this context, good code dealing with e.g. Java collections will look something like this (not that the method itself is of any use at all, just illustration):

public <T> Set<T> toSet(Collection<T> collection) {
    return Sets.newHashSet(collection);
}

while bad code might look like this:

public <T> HashSet<T> toSet(ArrayList<T> collection) {
   return Sets.newHashSet(collection);
}

Not only the former can be applied to a wider choice of arguments, its results will be more compatible with code provided by other developers that generally adhere to the concept of programming to an interface. However, the most important reasons to use the former are:

  • most of the time the context, in which the result is used, does not and should not need that many details as the concrete implementation provides;
  • adhering to an interface forces cleaner code and less hacks such as yet another public method gets added to a class serving some specific scenario;
  • the code is more testable as interfaces are easily mockable;
  • finally, the concept helps even if only one implementation is expected (at least for testability).

So how can one easily apply the concept of programming to an interface when writing new code having in mind one particular implementation? One option that we commonly use is a combination of the following patterns:

  • programming to an interface
  • factory
  • builder

The following example based on these principles is a simplified and truncated version of an RPC implementation written for a number of different protocols:

public interface RemoteInvoker {
     <RQ, RS> CompletableFuture<RS> invoke(RQ request, Class<RS> responseClass);
}

The above interface is not supposed to be instantiated directly via a factory, instead we derive further more concrete interfaces, one for HTTP invocation and one for AMQP, each then having a factory and a builder to construct instances, which in turn are also instances of the above interface: 

public interface AmqpInvoker extends RemoteInvoker {
	static AmqpInvokerBuilder with(String instanceId, ConnectionFactory factory) {
		return new AmqpInvokerBuilder(instanceId, factory);
	}
}

Instances of RemoteInvoker for the use with AMQP can now be constructed as easy as (or more involved depending on the builder): 

RemoteInvoker invoker = AmqpInvoker.with(instanceId, factory)
    .requestRouter(router)
    .build();

And an invocation of a request is as easy as:

Response res = invoker.invoke(new Request(data), Response.class).get();

Due to Java 8 permitting placing of static methods directly into interfaces, the intermediate factory has become implicit in the above code replaced with AmqpInvoker.with(). In Java prior to version 8, the same effect can be achieved with an inner Factory class:

public interface AmqpInvoker extends RemoteInvoker {
	class Factory {
		public static AmqpInvokerBuilder with(String instanceId, ConnectionFactory factory) {
			return new AmqpInvokerBuilder(instanceId, factory);
		}
	}
}

The corresponding instantiation would then turn into:

RemoteInvoker invoker = AmqpInvoker.Factory.with(instanceId, factory)
    .requestRouter(router)
    .build();

The builder used above could look like this (although this is a simplification as the actual one permits defining of up to 15 parameters deviating from defaults). Note that the construct is not public, so it is specifically usable only from the above AmqpInvoker interface: 

public class AmqpInvokerBuilder {
 
	AmqpInvokerBuilder(String instanceId, ConnectionFactory factory) {
		this.instanceId = instanceId;
		this.factory = factory;
	}
 
	public AmqpInvokerBuilder requestRouter(RequestRouter requestRouter) {
		this.requestRouter = requestRouter;
		return this;
	}
 
	public AmqpInvoker build() throws TimeoutException, IOException {
		return new AmqpInvokerImpl(instanceId, factory, requestRouter);
	}
}

Generally, a builder can also be generated using a tool like FreeBuilder.

Finally, the standard (and the only expected) implementation of this interface is defined as a package-local class to enforce the use of the interface, the factory and the builder: 

class AmqpInvokerImpl implements AmqpInvoker {
	AmqpInvokerImpl(String instanceId, ConnectionFactory factory, RequestRouter requestRouter) {
		...
	}
 
	@Override
	public <RQ, RS> CompletableFuture<RS> invoke(final RQ request, final Class<RS> respClass) {
		...
	}
}

Meanwhile, this pattern proved to be very efficient in developing all our new code not matter how simple or complex the functionality is.

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