overview/principles/ObjectValidation.md

Object validation

Validation of objects is essential for the quality of object-oriented programs.

This page provides a rough overview of different techniques and strategies around object validation.

Basics

Object types

The appropriate kind of validation may differ on the kind of object, whether it is

• mutable or
• immutable

Validation results

Validation results can be divided into:

• Detailed: containing a list of violations
• Simple: reporting just one violation (or even only success/failure), either with a simple or a generic message

Technical possibilities

Most languages are offering the following possibilities for failure handling:

• Return values
• Exceptions

Validation time

• Before object creation
• After creation (but before actual usage of the data)

Validation patterns

• Validation on existing objects/states during business operations (i.e. after object creation) (see https://enterprisecraftsmanship.com/posts/validation-and-ddd/) :
  • validate / isValid methods (backdraw: race conditions can lead to invalid state)
  • in application services (backdraw: potential business logic leakage)
  • TryExecute (backdraw: no CQRS separation: potential state change AND returning data (i.e. error message))
  • Execute / CanExecute => call separately „Can“- and „execute“-method, (partial) state is stored locally which means no race conditions can lead to an invalid state
• Validation during object creation (avoids invalid objects), without public validation method
  • In constructor
  • In factory method (e.g. create method)
  • In Factory
  • In Builder
• Validation before object creation with public validation method (avoids invalid objects, allows CQRS and detailed results):
  • With (static/class level) validation AND factory method - (https://savoiragile.com/2012/06/28/english-object-validation-on-immutable-objects/ & https://reflectoring.io/java-immutables/ )
  • Using Essence pattern (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9776193/good-practice-to-validate-immutable-values-objects )
  • Also Factory and Builder pattern could be added with a validate method (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16221010/should-the-factory-pattern-contain-validation-logic ), but does not seem very common

Potential strategies

Strategies for validations after object creation

(From https://enterprisecraftsmanship.com/posts/validation-and-ddd/):

• The Execute / TryExecute pattern works best for task-based scenarios.
• For CRUD scenarios, you need to choose between Execute / TryExecute and validation in application services. The choice comes down to purity versus ease of implementation.

Strategies for validations before object creation

• With (static/class level) validation AND factory method (for less complex cases)
• Essence pattern (for complex cases)

Strategies for validation results:

• Detailed, containing a list of violations => for crud operations of multi-field input
• Simple: reporting one violation either with a simple or a generic message => for task-based operations (user just wants to execute a task and wants to know if the task was successful or not resp. why not)

Technical mechanisms:

• Return value for “expected” failures
• Exception for “unexpected” failures

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/99683/which-and-why-do-you-prefer-exceptions-or-return-codes https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5460101/choosing-between-exception-and-return-value https://enterprisecraftsmanship.com/posts/error-handling-exception-or-result/

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###Appendix Possibilities for creation of objects (patterns, etc):

• Constructor
• Factory method (e.g. create method)
• Factory
• Builder
• Essence
• Other creational patterns: Prototype, Object Pool, Abstract Factory, Singleton