Riley Miller

SOLID Principles in Spring Boot Part II

November 26, 2020

Photo from Unsplash byDaniel Schwarz

This article will take you through the remaining SOLID principles as we build out a light-weight, cryptocurrency digit wallet API in Spring Boot. By the end of this assignment you will have an understanding of the Open-closed Principle (OCP), the Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP), and the Interface Segregation Principle (ISP).

SOLID Principles

To review, SOLID Principles are a set of software design principles in object-oriented programming that are used to make software more maintainable, extensible, and flexible.

The theory of SOLID principles was introduced by Robert C. Martin in his paper Design Principles and Design Patterns and consists of 5 core principles:

Single-responsibility principle: A class should only have a single responsibility, that is, only changes to one part of the software’s specification should be able to affect the specification of the class.

Open-closed principle: A module should be open for extension but closed for modification.

Liskov Substitution principle: Instances of a class should be replaceable by instances of a derived class without altering correctness of the program.

Interface Segregation principle: Many client-specific interfaces are better than one general-purpose interface.

Dependency Inversion principle: Depend upon abstractions. Do not depend upon concretions.

In this assignment we will deal with the Open-closed principle, Dependency Inversion principle, and the Interface Segregation principle.

Before we start, make sure that you’ve completed the setup and Part 1 prior to starting Part 2.

Starter Code

After completing Part 1 of the assignment, your project should have the following classes and directory structure below 👇:

1.../restservice/
2                api/
3                    DigitalWalletController.java
4                coins/
5                    Bitcoin.java
6                    BitcoinRobust.java
7                wallet/
8                    DigitalWallet.java
9

Assignment

This assignment will focus on decoupling the architecture we implemented in Part 1 to support future requirements of the DigitalWallet.

Open-closed Principle

The first part of the assignment will deal with the Open-closed principle.

Robert C. Martin, one of the father’s of Agile software development described that the Open-closed principle was the most important of the five SOLID principles. This principle is based off the idea that:

A module should be open for extension but closed for modification.

In essence, you can use abstract classes or interfaces to allow for different implementations without changing the code that uses them. Since interfaces are built into Java to handle Multi-Inheritance, they lend themselves well for upholding the Open-closed principle. For our use-case, interfaces will be closed for modification and we will use new classes to extend the functionality of our system.

To demonstrate this principle, we will revisit the DigitalWallet class and reimagine how we could make it more flexible and loosely coupled to handle future use cases.

The three methods implemented in the DigitalWallet class: processTransaction, zero, and accountBalance are all configured to handle Bitcoin. If we wanted to add other types of coins to our wallet, we’d need to refactor our DigitalWallet class so let’s do that now.

Instructions 🎒

  • Create an interface called ICoin that speficies the 3 API methods in the DigitWallet class:

    • processTransaction
    • zero
    • accountBalance

  • Implement the method on the Bitcoin class (Note: you only have to implement the interface on the base Bitcoin class since BitcoinRobust is a child class)

  • Change the return type of the three API methods in the DigitalWallet class: processTransaction, zero, and accountBalance, to the new interface ICoin.

  • Change the return type of the endpoints in DigitalWalletController to ICoin.

After this refactor, test all of the API endpoints and ensure that the output is still the same.

At this point, the DigitalWallet class is almost heeding to the Open-closed principle but there is one more consideration we must take into account to fully decouple this class from implementation details and ensure that the class is open for extension yet closed for modification.

Dependency Inversion principle

The Dependency Inversion principle specifies that modules should:

Depend upon abstractions. Do not depend upon concretions.

In the DigitalWallet class, although we created and implemented the ICoin interface—the DigitalWallet class is still relying on the Bitcoin singleton in all three of the API methods. This is an example of relying on a concretion instead of an abstraction and is also preventing the class from complying with the Open-closed principle since you would need to modify the DigitalWallet class if you wanted to add another coin to the wallet like Ethereum 😉.

Instructions 🎒

  • Remove the references of the Bitcoin singleton from the DigitalWallet class and refactor the three API methods to have a parameter ICoin coin that is used to call the corresponding ICoin method.
  • In DigitalWalletController, pass the Bitcoin singleton into the DigitalWallet methods for each endpoint.

After this refactor, the DigitalWallet class is dependent completely on abstraction now that we’ve inverted the dependency on the Bitcoin singleton to the client that invokes the DigitalWallet methods, making this class loosely coupled and flexible.

We’re now adhering to the Open-closed principle as well as the Dependency Inversion principle.

Ethereum

Ethereum is a global, open-source platform for decentralized applications. It runs off a cryprocurrency called Ether (ETH) which is used to power thousands of Distributed applications (Dapps).

Now that we’ve extended our DigitalWallet class, let’s go on and add another coin to our wallet.

Instructions 🎒

  • Create a class called Ethereum that implements the ICoin interface.

    • Make the Ethereum class a singleton since this will only be used to manage your Ethereum.

    • Add two static constants to the Ethereum class:

      • NAME
      • WHITE_PAPER

    • Add one non-static attribute to the Ethereum class:

      • ether

    • Create two static attributes constants named:

      • ETHER_USD, which will hold the price of Ethereum in USD (e.g ETHEREUM_USD = 524.44)
      • TRANSACTION_FEE_USD, which will hold the price of the transaction fee in USD (e.g TRANSACTION_FEE_USD = 11.66)

    • Create three methods that map to the three endpoints defined in DigitalWalletController:

      • Ethereum processTransation( double requestedEther ), This method will now need to deduct a transaction fee off the amount of Bitcoin in the requested transaction. Note: you should also take the transaction fee into account when checking to see whether or not there are sufficient funds for the transaction.
      • Ethereum setZero()
      • Ethereum accountBalance()

    • Create four methods that will be used to serialize the Java object to a JSON response.

      • public String getName()
      • public double getEther()
      • public String getWhitePaper()
      • public double getTransactionFeeUSD()

  • Refactor the endpoints in DigitalWalletController to be prefixed with /btc/ e.g @GetMapping("/btc/transaction")

    • You should also rename the underlying methods of these endpoints e.g wallet(...) ➡️ btc_balance(...)

  • Create a reference to the Ethereum singleton in the DigitalWalletController class.

  • Create three new endpoints/methods in DigitalWalletController all prefixed with /eth/:

    • @GetMapping("/eth/transaction"), public ICoin eth_transaction(..)
    • @GetMapping("/eth/balance"), public ICoin eth_balance(..)
    • @GetMapping("/eth/zero"), public ICoin eth_zero(..)

Note: All of the Ethereum endpoints should pass the Ethereum singleton into the respective DigitalWallet methods.

Working through extending the service by adding a whole different cryptocurrency to our digital wallet shows the benefits of SOLID design.

We were able to extend the servce my implementing an Ethereum class without having to even touch the DigitalWallet class while making use of 4 out of the 5 SOLID principles.

However, we still have yet to cover the I in SOLID.

Interface Segregation Principle

The Interface Segregation Principle (ISP) is one of the most commonly used SOLID principles. The principle states:

Many client-specific interfaces are better than one general-purpose interface.

Thus far, we have only made use of one interface: ICoin. Placing all of the attributes that a coin must have in order to function correctly in our Digital Wallet.

Interfaces have many benefits, my favorite being composability which relates directly to ISP. By breaking general-purpose interfaces up into smaller single-purpose interfaces, it gives your service substantially more flexibility since there is no limit to the number of interfaces that a class can implement. It doesn’t make sense to create an interface for every method that you have on a single class, that would become difficult to maintain and largely unnecessary. However, if you have two classes that need to implement similar functionality and they’re not strictly related—this would be an excellent use case to define an interface and describe the functionality between the two classes.

In our use-case, Ethereum is much more than just a cryptocurrency. It’s a full-blown open-source platform that give developers the ability to write distributed applications (Dapps) with blockchain technology. Specifically, Ethereum has this entity called a smart-contract which is code that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.

To demonstrate the ISP, let’s implement Ethereum Smart Contracts in our service.

Instructions 🎒

  • Create a new class called SmartContract:

    • Create a non-static attribute called contract (This will represent a stringified program that will be run on the Ethereum blockchain)
    • Create a non-default constructor that takes in a string parameter called contract and set the class attribute contract equal to the parameter.
    • Create a “getter” for the contract attribute.

  • On the ICoin interface add a new method called addContract( String contract )

  • In the Ethereum class:

    • Create a new attribute that is a list of SmartContracts called smartContracts
    • Implement the new addContract( String contract ) method, creating a SmartContract object, then adding this object to the smartContracts list.
    • Create a getter for the smartContracts attribute:
      • public List<SmartContract> getSmartContracts()

  • In the DigitalWallet class:

    • Create a new method addContract( ICoin coin, String contract ) that calls the coin addContract method.

  • In the Bitcoin class you will need to also implement the addContract(..) method now that it’s specified on the ICoin interface.. even though Bitcoin does not offer support for smart contracts. For this method do not add any implementation, just return null.

  • In the DigitalWalletController class, add the endpoint below 👇

1    @GetMapping("/eth/add_contract")
2    public ICoin eth_add_contract(
3            @RequestParam(value = "code", defaultValue = "0" )
4            String code )
5    {
6            try 
7            {               
8                return DigitalWallet
9                        .getInstance()
10                        .addContract( eth, code );
11            } 
12            catch( Exception e )
13            {
14                throw new ResponseStatusException(
15                        HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST, e.toString() );
16            }
17    }
18

This endpoint will map the /eth/add_contract/ endpoint to the addContract method via an HTTP - GET request that has a parameter “code”.

To test this new endpoint and to verify that this new functionality is working as intended type: http://localhost:8080/eth/add_contract?code=%22some%20code%20in%20here%22

This simulates adding a smart contract as a string “some code in here” that will be run as a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. If everything was setup correctly, you should see the following response:

1{"smartContracts":[{"contract":"\"some code in here\""}],"name":"Ethereum","eth":0.0,"transactionFeeUSD":11.66,"whitePaper":"https://blockchainlab.com/pdf/Ethereum_white_paper-a_next_generation_smart_contract_and_decentralized_application_platform-vitalik-buterin.pdf"}
2

Note: The order of the fields in the JSON response does not matter.

Circling back to the Interface Segregation Principle, we just ran into one of the primary issues this principle is designed to solve.

Bitcoin doesn’t support smart contracts.

But since we added the addContract method onto the ICoin interface, we had to implement the addContract method on the Bitcoin class.. even though this doesn’t make sense since Bitcoin doesn’t support smart contracts.

To resolve this, let’s create a new interface for handling smart contracts since smart contracts are a hot attribute of other cryptocurrencies outside of Ethereum.

Instructions 🎒

  • Create a new interface called ISmartContract

    • Specify a addContract( String contract ) method on the interface

  • Remove the addContract(..) method from the ICoin interface

  • Implement the interface on the Ethereum class

  • Remove the addContract(..) method from the Bitcoin class since addContract(...) is no longer on ICoin

  • Modify the return type of addContract in the DigitalWallet class to be of type ISmartContract

  • Modify the return type of the /eth/add_contract endpoint in DigitalWalletController to be of type ISmartContract

After you refactor this, ensure that the endpoint still behaves correctly and responds with the correct information.

Congrats, you’ve now applied the ISP in practice.

Submission

Submit your assignment on Canvas with your whole directory as a zip file <lastName-section>-spring-pt1.zip e.g Smith-SectionC-spring-pt1.zip

Rubric

Written by Riley Miller, follow me on Twitter 🐦

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