Spring and Maven Configuration

This is the first post of a series of posts demonstrating how we to use Spring in an application.
In the series I will show some howtos of technical aspects (context file, properties, etc.).
And I will also show some design aspects and test approach.

In this post I will simply show how to integrate Spring using Maven.

The basic dependency would be the context. Using Maven dependencies, spring-core will be in the project as well.

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
  <version>${spring.version}</version>
</dependency>

If we want to use annotation such as @Inject which comes from Java JSR, we’ll add the following dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>javax.inject</groupId>
  <artifactId>javax.inject</artifactId>
  <version>1</version>
</dependency>

And in order to be able to test using Spring, here’s what we’ll need (in here, the scope is test):

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
  <version>${spring.version}</version>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

You can see that I didn’t add spring-core as it comes with the context / test dependencies.

You can find the code at: https://github.com/eyalgo/request-validation

Some notes about the code.

I added the Spring code, context and the Spring’s Maven dependencies to the test environment.
This is on purpose.
I want to emphasize the separation of the validation-filter framework to the usage and wiring of an application.

In real life, you might have an external library that you’ll want to use it in a Spring injected application.
So the test environment in the code simulates the application and the src is the “external library”.

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Request Validation and Filtering by Flags – Redesign and Refactoring

General
In the previous posts I started describing a validation / filtering framework we’re building.
While showing the code, I am trying to show clean code, test orientation and code evolution.
It has some agility in the process; We know the end requirements, but the exact details are evolving over time.

During the development we have changed the code to be more general as we saw some patterns in it.
The code evolved as the flow evolved as well.

The flow as we now understand it
Here’s a diagram of the flow we’ll implement

Request Sequence

Request Sequence

The Pattern
At each step of the sequence (validation, filtering, action), we recognized the same pattern:

  1. We have specific implementations (filters, validations)
  2. We have an engine that wraps up the specific implementations
  3. We need to map the implementations by flag, and upon request’s flags, select the appropriate implementations.
  4. We need to have a class that calls the mapper and then the engine

A diagram showing the pattern

The Pattern

The Pattern

Source Code
In order to show some of the evolution of the code, and how refactoring changed it, I added tags in GitHub after major changes.

Code Examples
Let’s see what came up from the mapper pattern.

public interface MapperByFlag<T> {
  List<T> getOperations(Request request);
}
public abstract class AbstractMapperByFlag<T> implements MapperByFlag<T> {
  private List<T> defaultOperations;
  private Map<String, List<T>> mapOfOperations;

  public AbstractMapperByFlag(List<T> defaultOperations, Map<String, List<T>> mapOfOperations) {
    this.defaultOperations = defaultOperations;
    this.mapOfOperations = mapOfOperations;
  }

  @Override
  public final List<T> getOperations(Request request) {
    Set<T> selectedFilters = Sets.newHashSet(defaultOperations);
    Set<String> flags = request.getFlags();
    for (String flag : flags) {
      if (mapOfOperations.containsKey(flag)) {
        selectedFilters.addAll(mapOfOperations.get(flag));
      }
    }
    return Lists.newArrayList(selectedFilters);
  }
}
  public RequestValidationByFlagMapper(List<RequestValidation> defaultValidations,
    map<String, List<RequestValidation>> mapOfValidations) {
    super(defaultValidations, mapOfValidations);
  }

  public ItemFiltersByFlagMapper(List<Filter> defaultFilters, Map<String, List<Filter>> mapOfFilters) {
    super(defaultFilters, mapOfFilters);
  }

I created a test for the abstract class, to show the flow itself.
The tests of the implementations use Java Reflection to verify that the correct injected parameters are sent to the super.
I am showing the imports here as well. To have some reference for the static imports, mockito and hamcrest packages and classes.

import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.containsInAnyOrder;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.when;

import java.util.List;
import java.util.Map;

import org.eyal.requestvalidation.model.Request;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.mockito.Mock;
import org.mockito.runners.MockitoJUnitRunner;

import com.google.common.collect.ImmutableMap;
import com.google.common.collect.Lists;
import com.google.common.collect.Sets;

@RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class)
public class AbstractMapperByFlagTest {
	private final static String FLAG_1 = "flag 1";
	private final static String FLAG_2 = "flag 2";

	@Mock
	private Request request;

	private String defaultOperation1 = "defaultOperation1";
	private String defaultOperation2 = "defaultOperation2";
	private String mapOperation11 = "mapOperation11";
	private String mapOperation12 = "mapOperation12";
	private String mapOperation23 = "mapOperation23";

	private MapperByFlag<String> mapper;

	@Before
	public void setup() {
		List<String> defaults = Lists.newArrayList(defaultOperation1, defaultOperation2);
		Map<String, List<String>> mapped = ImmutableMap.<String, List<String>> builder()
		        .put(FLAG_1, Lists.newArrayList(mapOperation11, mapOperation12))
		        .put(FLAG_2, Lists.newArrayList(mapOperation23, mapOperation11)).build();
		mapper = new AbstractMapperByFlag<String>(defaults, mapped) {
		};
	}

	@Test
	public void whenRequestDoesNotHaveFlagsShouldReturnDefaultFiltersOnly() {
		when(request.getFlags()).thenReturn(Sets.<String> newHashSet());

		List<String> filters = mapper.getOperations(request);
		assertThat(filters, containsInAnyOrder(defaultOperation1, defaultOperation2));
	}

	@Test
	public void whenRequestHasFlagsNotInMappingShouldReturnDefaultFiltersOnly() {
		when(request.getFlags()).thenReturn(Sets.<String> newHashSet("un-mapped-flag"));
		List<String> filters = mapper.getOperations(request);
		assertThat(filters, containsInAnyOrder(defaultOperation1, defaultOperation2));
	}
	
	@Test
	public void whenRequestHasOneFlagShouldReturnWithDefaultAndMappedFilters() {
		when(request.getFlags()).thenReturn(Sets.<String> newHashSet(FLAG_1));
		List<String> filters = mapper.getOperations(request);
		assertThat(filters, containsInAnyOrder(mapOperation12, defaultOperation1, mapOperation11, defaultOperation2));
	}
	
	@Test
	public void whenRequestHasTwoFlagsShouldReturnWithDefaultAndMappedFiltersWithoutDuplications() {
		when(request.getFlags()).thenReturn(Sets.<String> newHashSet(FLAG_1, FLAG_2));
		List<String> filters = mapper.getOperations(request);
		assertThat(filters, containsInAnyOrder(mapOperation12, defaultOperation1, mapOperation11, defaultOperation2, mapOperation23));
	}
}
@RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class)
public class RequestValidationByFlagMapperTest {

	@Mock
	private List<RequestValidation> defaultValidations;
    
	@Mock
	private Map<String, List<RequestValidation>> mapOfValidations;

	@InjectMocks
	private RequestValidationByFlagMapper mapper;

	@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    @Test
	public void verifyParameters() throws NoSuchFieldException, SecurityException, IllegalArgumentException,
	        IllegalAccessException {
		Field defaultOperationsField = AbstractMapperByFlag.class.getDeclaredField("defaultOperations");
		defaultOperationsField.setAccessible(true);
        List<RequestValidation> actualFilters = (List<RequestValidation>) defaultOperationsField.get(mapper);
		assertThat(actualFilters, sameInstance(defaultValidations));

		Field mapOfFiltersField = AbstractMapperByFlag.class.getDeclaredField("mapOfOperations");
		mapOfFiltersField.setAccessible(true);
		Map<String, List<RequestValidation>> actualMapOfFilters = (Map<String, List<RequestValidation>>) mapOfFiltersField.get(mapper);
		assertThat(actualMapOfFilters, sameInstance(mapOfValidations));
	}
}

To Do
There are other classes that might be candidate for refactoring of some sort.
RequestFlowValidation and RequestFilter are similar.
And
RequestValidationsEngineImpl and FiltersEngine

To Do 2
Create a Matcher for the reflection part.

Code
As always, all the code can be found at:

A Tag for this post: all-components-in

Conclusion
The infrastructure is almost done.
During this time we are also implementing actual classes for the flow (validations, filters, actions).
These are not covered in the posts, nor in GitHub.
The infrastructure will be wired to a service we have using Spring.
This will be explained in future posts.

Request Validation and Filtering by Flags – Introduction

General

We are working on a service that should accept some kind of request.

The request has List of Items. In the response we need to tell the client whether the request is valid and also some information about each item: is it valid or not. If it’s valid, it will be persisted. If it’s not, it should be filtered out. So the response can have information of how many items are valid (and sent to be persisted) and list of information of the filtered out items.

The request has another metadata in it. It has collection (set) of flags. The filtering and validation is based on the flags of the request. So basically one request may be validated and filtered differently than the other, based on the flags of each request.

We might have general validations / filters that need to be applied to any request, whatever flags it has.

Request Validation and Filtering High level design

Design

Flags Mapping

We’ll hold a mapping of flag-to-filters, and flag-to-validation.

Request

Has flags and items.

Components

Filter, Filter-Engine, Flags-Mapper

Development Approach

Bottom Up

We have a basic request already, as the service is up and running, but we don’t have any infrastructure for flags, flag-mapping, validation and filtering.

We’ll work bottom up; create the mechanism for filtering, enhance the request and then wire it up using Spring.

Coding

I’ll try to show the code using tests, and the development using some kind of TDD approach.

I am using eclipse’s EclEmma for coverage.

General

By looking at the code, you can see usage of JUnit, Mockito, Hamcrest, Google-Guava.

You can also see small classes, and interface development approach.

Source Code

https://github.com/eyalgo/request-validation