Month: June 2019

How to Write a Simple, yet Extensible API

Posted on by lukaseder

How to write a simple API is already an art on its own.

I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

― Mark Twain

But keeping an API simple for beginners and most users, and making it extensible for power users seems even more of a challenge. But is it?

What does “extensible” mean?

Imagine an API like, oh say, jOOQ. In jOOQ, you can write SQL predicates like this:

ctx.select(T.A, T.B)
   .from(T)
   .where(T.C.eq(1)) // Predicate with bind value here
   .fetch();

By default (as this should always be the default), jOOQ will generate and execute this SQL statement on your JDBC driver, using a bind variable:

SELECT t.a, t.b
FROM t
WHERE t.c = ?

The API made the most common use case simple. Just pass your bind variable as if the statement was written in e.g. PL/SQL, and let the language / API do the rest. So we passed that test.

The use case for power users is to occasionally not use bind variables, for whatever reasons (e.g. skew in data and bad statistics, see also this post about bind variables).Will we pass that test as well?

jOOQ mainly offers two ways to fix this:

On a per-query basis

You can turn your variable into an inline value explicitly for this single occasion:

ctx.select(T.A, T.B)
   .from(T)
   .where(T.C.eq(inline(1))) // Predicate without bind value here
   .fetch();

This is using the static imported DSL.inline() method. Works, but not very convenient, if you have to do this for several queries, for several bind values, or worse, depending on some context.

This is a necessary API enhancement, but it does not make the API extensible.

On a global basis

Notice that ctx object there? It is the DSLContext object, the “contextual DSL”, i.e. the DSL API that is in the context of a jOOQ Configuration. You can thus set:

ctx2 = DSL.using(ctx
    .configuration()
    .derive()
    .set(new Settings()
    .withStatementType(StatementType.STATIC_STATEMENT));

// And now use this new DSLContext instead of the old one
ctx2.select(T.A, T.B)
    .from(T)
    .where(T.C.eq(1)) // No longer a bind variable
    .fetch();

Different approaches to offering such extensibility

We have our clean and simple API. Now some user wants to extend it. So often, we’re tempted to resort to a hack, e.g. by using thread locals, because they would work easily when under the assumption of a thread-bound execution model – such as e.g. classic Java EE Servlets

The price we’re paying for such a hack is high.

  1. It’s a hack, and as such it will break easily. If we offer this as functionality to a user, they will start depending on it, and we will have to support and maintain it
  2. It’s a hack, and it is based on assumptions, such as thread bound ness. It will not work in an async / reactive / parallel stream context, where our logic may jump back and forth between threads
  3. It’s a hack, and deep inside, we know it’s wrong. Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/292

This might obviously work, just like global (static) variables. You can set this variable globally (or “globally” for your own thread), and then the API’s internals will be able to read it. No need to pass around parameters, so no need to compromise on the APIs simplicity by adding optional and often ugly, distractive parameters.

What are better approaches to offering such extensibility?

Dependency Injection

One way is to use explicit Dependency Injection (DI). If you have a container like Spring, you can rely on Spring injecting arbitrary objects into your method call / whatever, where you need access to it:

This way, if you maintain several contextual objects of different lifecycle scopes, you can let the DI framework make appropriate decisions to figure out where to get that contextual information from. For example, when using JAX-RS, you can do this using an annotation based approach:


// These annotations bind the method to some HTTP address
@GET
@Produces("text/plain")
@Path("/api")
public String method(

    // This annotation fetches a request-scoped object
    // from the method call's context
    @Context HttpServletRequest request,

    // This annotation produces an argument from the
    // URL's query parameters
    @QueryParam("arg") String arg
) {
    ...
}

This approach works quite nicely for static environments (annotations being static), where you do not want to react to dynamic URLs or endpoints. It is declarative, and a bit magic, but well designed, so once you know all the options, you can choose the right one for your use case very easily.

While @QueryParam is mere convenience (you could have gotten the argument also from the HttpServletRequest), the @Context is powerful. It can help inject values of arbitrary lifecycle scope into your method / class / etc.

I personally favour explicit programming over annotation-based magic (e.g. using Guice for DI), but that’s probably a matter of taste. Both are a great way for implementors of APIs (e.g. HTTP APIs) to help get access to framework objects.

However, if you’re an API vendor, and want to give users of your API a way to extend the API, I personally favour jOOQ’s SPI approach.

SPIs

One of jOOQ’s strengths, IMO, is precisely this single, central place to register all SPI implementations that can be used for all sorts of purposes: The Configuration.

For example, on such a Configuration you can specify a JSR-310 java.time.Clock. This clock will be used by jOOQ’s internals to produce client side timestamps, instead of e.g. using System.currentTimeMillis(). Definitely a use case for power users only, but once you have this use case, you really only want to tweak a single place in jOOQ’s API: The Configuration.

All of jOOQ’s internals will always have a Configuration reference available. And it’s up to the user to decide what the scope of this object is, jOOQ doesn’t care. E.g.

  • per query
  • per thread
  • per request
  • per session
  • per application

In other words, to jOOQ, it doesn’t matter at all if you’re implementing a thread-bound, blocking, classic servlet model, or if you’re running your code reactively, or in parallel, or whatever. Just manage your own Configuration lifecycle, jOOQ doesn’t care.

In fact, you can have a global, singleton Configuration and implement thread bound components of it, e.g. the ConnectionProvider SPI, which takes care of managing the JDBC Connection lifecycle for jOOQ. Typically, users will use e.g. a Spring DataSource, which manages JDBC Connection (and transactions) using a thread-bound model, internally using ThreadLocal. jOOQ does not care. The SPI specifies that jOOQ will:

Again, it does not matter to jOOQ what the specific ConnectionProvider implementation does. You can implement it in any way you want if you’re a power user. By default, you’ll just pass jOOQ a DataSource, and it will wrap it in a default implementation called DataSourceConnectionProvider for you.

The key here is again:

  • The API is simple by default, i.e. by default, you don’t have to know about this functionality, just pass jOOQ a DataSource as always when working with Java and SQL, and you’re ready to go
  • The SPI allows for easily extending the API without compromising on its simplicity, by providing a single, central access point to this kind of functionality

Other SPIs in Configuration include:

  • ExecuteListener: An extremely useful and simple way to hook into the entire jOOQ query management lifecycle, from generating the SQL string to preparing the JDBC statement, to binding variables, to execution, to fetching result sets. A single SPI can accomodate various use cases like SQL logging, patching SQL strings, patching JDBC statements, listening to result set events, etc.
  • ExecutorProvider: Whenever jOOQ runs something asynchronously, it will ask this SPI to provide a standard JDK Executor, which will be used to run the asynchronous code block. By default, this will be the JDK default (the default ForkJoinPool), as always. But you probably want to override this default, and you want to be in full control of this, and not think about it every single time you run a query.
  • MetaProvider: Whenever jOOQ needs to look up database meta information (schemas, tables, columns, types, etc.), it will ask this MetaProvider about the available meta information. By default, this will run queries on the JDBC DatabaseMetaData, which is good enough, but maybe you want to wire these calls to your jOOQ-generated classes, or something else.
  • RecordMapperProvider and RecordUnmapperProvider: jOOQ has a quite versatile default implementation of how to map between a jOOQ Record and an arbitrary Java class, supporting a variety of standard approaches including JavaBeans getter/setter naming conventions, JavaBeans @ConstructorProperties, and much more. These defaults apply e.g. when writing query.fetchInto(MyBean.class). But sometimes, the defaults are not good enough, and you want this particular mapping to work differently. Sure, you could write query.fetchInto(record -> mymapper(record)), but you may not want to remember this for every single query. Just override the mapper (and unmapper) at a single, central spot for your own chosen Configuration scope (e.g. per query, per request, per session, etc.) and you’re done

Conclusion

Writing a simple API is difficult. Making it extensible in a simple way, however, is not. If your API has achieved “simplicity”, then it is very easy to support injecting arbitrary SPIs for arbitrary purposes at a single, central location, such as jOOQ’s Configuration.

In my most recent talk “10 Reasons Why we Love Some APIs and Why we Hate Some Others”, I’ve made a point that things like simplicity, discoverability, consistency, and convenience are among the most important aspects of a great API. How do you define a good API? The most underrated answer on this (obviously closed) Stack Overflow question is this one:

.

Again, this is hard in terms of creating a simple API. But it is extremely easy when making this simple API extensible. Make your SPIs very easily discoverable. A jOOQ power user will always look for extension points in jOOQ’s Configuration. And because the extension points are explicit types which have to be implemented (as opposed to annotations and their magic), no documentation is needed to learn the SPI (of course it is still beneficial as a reference).

I’d love to hear your alternative approaches to this API design challenge in the comments.

Watch the full talk here: